This is a photograph taken by a kid who only started shooting with a camera a few days earlier. Aren’t you impressed? So was I when I met the instructor and founder of Rising Shutterbug and saw her students’ work. Jess Levey teaches the artsiest kids at Packer, Magic Box Productions, BRIC Arts and HiArt who create cool portfolios (like the one above)- but she also teaches private lessons to children and adults who just have a hankering to get shooting digitally right. Jess offered to try her luck with my mom (a former portrait photographer) and me (camera junkie) and my son (camera know-nothing) how to use a digital camera well. The operative word here is well.
First, Jess looked at both the cameras owned by my mom and me and helped us to understand all the settings and when to use them. Then she gave us a test. She created a typical lighting situation: photographing people backlight by incandescent lighting. Here is my mom’s photo:
Backlight nightmares!
Not so great. You can see the light behind us is blown out and my daughter is underlit with no definition on her face. Poor sunken black eyes on Willow. I promise she does get sleep. Jess showed us how to do two simple settings on our camera to get this:
Hooray! Much better
Much better! Okay, so you lose a little definition on my face with the lack of shadows- but look! You can see the lamp behind me has an incandescent lightbulb and we really have eyes with eye color!
Mom and I felt pretty “pro” after Jess gave us some more “tricks of digital photomaking”. My mom was especially pleased to become acquainted with her 35 mm SLR camera that she had been tortured to understand for a couple of years.
On to my 4.5 year old son.
Jess gave my son the most basic of tips, from how to hold the camera steady to finding the subject matter in the viewfinder. She enticed him to make his own photos of his toys with his drawings as backgrounds. That got him totally psyched! What a kid’s dream- photos of his toys…and his drawings- together, forever, in perpetuity! Really, it was a brilliant suggestion on her part.
So, Birch went mad with the camera. These are some of his photos:
Birch's Star Wars toy with his drawing in the background
Yes, the forefront was a little out of focus, but this photo shows he finally had mastered holding the camera steady to take a specific shot. He composed this very carefully as he wanted the animal to have the circle going around his head. (Don’t ask- I didn’t!)
Circles, circles, circles
And here is his still life of circles. Nice introduction to the concept of composition and shape, right?
His "artsy" photo
This photo was taken after Jess left and Birch was still experimenting with the camera. He loved doing these blurry photos (which he had learned about by trying to hold the camera steady in low-light conditions).
I can’t think of a more long-lasting gift to give your family than a lesson on how to shoot family photographs with skill. Since I’m the main shooter for our family, I have really enjoyed applying my new-found techniques to my shots. I’m totally thrilled that Birch may grow up shooting photos of the family t0o. Maybe one day I will make it to the front of the camera instead of the back of it, thanks to Jess!
Details:
Rising Shutterbug
Jess Levey
risingshutterbug@yahoo.com
RATES
Private Lessons: 60 minutes. $100/class. Minimum of 3 lessons total. 6 lessons for $500. Materials fee: $25
Group classes: 90 minutes. 3-6 students total. $50/student/class. Minimum of 3 classes total. Materials fee: $25/student.