bokeh like butter

This morning was the first meeting of my six-week "people photography" course that I am getting to take through my new job. I'm not getting paid to take this class or anything, but the course is free. Which rules.

I wasn't sure what to expect from the first class meeting. The director of the school where I am taking the course had asked me beforehand if I had a basic understanding of how my camera works. I'm not a technically strong photographer, but I have a general idea of how the camera works ("Just put it on P and press the shutter!"), so I said yes.

The instructor, Dave, invited each of us to introduce ourselves to the class. The class includes about a dozen people of all different skill levels. There were people who had just gotten a new digital camera and wanted to learn how to get satisfying photos of their kids. There were people who worked in photography professionally who wanted to learn some new compositional tricks.

The director fired up a slide show of some of his favorite portraits from celebrated and little-known photographers, and some students started asking questions. What was exciting is that I found myself nodding along to all of the answers he gave. I actually understood what he was saying, and I understood why he was giving those answers. I would have answered the questions the same way if I had been teaching the class.

Dave gave us our first photographic assignment, made a lens recommendation (the 50mm f1.8, for those of you playing along at home), and set us free to go take some great portraits. We report to next Wednesday's class with JPGs from this week's photographic assignment.

It was an encouraging class. It helped me see that I am slowly developing my skills and learning to trust my instincts about what works and what doesn't. Also, just being in the same room with a group of people who are excited about improving their craft is really energizing.

There's a lot of wonderful little stuff happening here, stuff that isn't earth-shattering but still lets me know that I am on a good path. I am waiting for some more of the details to unfold and then I hope to share some of those little stories here.

It looks like Wednesday is going to be one of my "weekend" days in this new schedule (Saturday is now a work day). The schedule is not as predictable as I would like, but it's doing work I really enjoy. So far, quitting the corporate game is proving to be a great decision.