I know about this free workshop from PhotoMalaysia forum. I quickly send an email to reserve a place. I thought its gonna be full since its free and how expensive a normal photography workshop can be (around RM500++).
It was held at Faber Towers at Taman Desa. Free parking (maybe on Saturday and Sunday only – I dont know). Quite big hall to accommodate enough crowd.
At start I think it is better if Puan Susi (if not mistaken) do the introduction rather than playing slideshow with lots of text to read. I get bored with the slideshow. I know being NGO and such means they do not have enough fund to do nice video montage, just less text, more picture would be better for the introduction
slideshow.
Ok. It was not a fully featured workshop. More of talk. But a very informative one from the speaker Mr. Sanjitpaal Singh. There are few point that I take during the talk/experience sharing.
- Photography is fun and an amazing thing to do.
- Best way to improve photography is not to spend more time in front of laptop. Go out and shoot!
- Aperture priority is the most popular choice among amateur. Recommended to use to enter the competition (Ensearch National Photography Competition 2011) also recommended to use small aperture number (big opening).
- White balance determine how cold or warm your photo is. Cold refer to blue, Warm refer to red.
- Try to mess around with White Balance, it’ll come out as slightly different color. Not for documentary since it need the natural looking.
- Quick way to determine what White Balance to use is to turn on Live View and play around with White Balance see which one closest to pure white. [Referred as cheat way]
- In the competition, judges look for beauty.
- Beauty does not mean pretty.
- Beauty can be interpret in many ways.
- Colors.
- Composition.
- Action.
- Surrounding.
- Angle.
- Subject.
And a few experience that I manage to jot down.
Mr. Sanjitpaal is on assignment on taking photo of Orang utan at Sepilok. When in forest, he saw Orang Utan at a big tree, very huge called Ironwood. Se he going up by ladder and onto the platform at around 300++ feet. Then he start taking photos with his Olympus 300mm with tele converter which translate to around 1200mm (I dont know what else is involved – Missed some part here) and weight around 13 kg. He spend about an hour taking picture when shutter make funny sound. Then shutter broke. Not working. He said, imagine I am deep in a forest with broken camera. Nothing to do, so pack the items and go to Kota Kinabalu and called the sponsor to update on what happen. The sponsor said no problem, go to this shop and get a replacement camera. Unfortunately it is weekend and the shop is closed. He had to wait for the shop to open to get replacement camera and continue with the assignment.
My take on this is shit happen, so best we prepared for it when it happen.
Never ever use flash to take Owl picture. There is a case where a guy take picture of an Owl with flash multiple times. The Owl got scared and fly away. Not far from that around 200m or so they found the Owl dead. [Something to do with Owl sensitive eyes being blind by the flash and who knows what happen - my add]
Same goes to frog, never use flash to take picture of it. Not even LED flashlight. The white light make them scared. Best to used the yellow bulb flashlight.
Overall I enjoy the workshop though it was kind of short. But what to expect from a free workshop. Also you got almost all the tips on how to enter and win the competition. The tips is direct from the judges of the competition. What more can you ask ?
Note to myself, next time bring name card (still not finish yet printing meh?) so we can exchange contact. Kinda hard to wrote down phone no and email.