Photography Workshop: Metrics & Downloads

I taught a Photography Workshop on Sunday, November 14, 2010, at Studio 5 for the Tri-State Photography & Arts Meetup group. It was a privilege to work with everyone and I really appreciate that people demonstrated great professionalism and a willingness to learn throughout the event. Special thanks to Albert Heefner, who organized the meetup, provided studio space, and was a great host/troubleshooter throughout.

Forensics

There were six photographers, three models, and one MUA. Photographers were presented with dedicated coursework. Models were encouraged to work on their craft via examples, during downtime. The MUA just knew what to do when presented with the sets (awesome). In the last 60% of the course both groups were brought together to perform as a team. Photography from the workshop is pending the photographers working through their photos and posting.

Survey results:

Workshop Content – 9/9 – “Very Satisfied”

Instructor Performance – 9/9 – “Very Satisfied”

One-on-One Attention (Photographers) –  5/6 – “Very Satisfied” and 1/6 “Satisfied”

One-on-One Attention (Models) – 1/3 – “Very Satisfied” and 2/3 – “Satisfied”

Workshop Fee – 3/6 – “Inexpensive” and 3/6 – “Appropriate”

“Will you be able to immediately apply techniques you learned today?” – 9/9 -“Yes”

“Would you like to see a continuation of this class offered?” – 9/9 – “Yes”

Overall Workshop Rating – 8/9 “5 Stars” and 1/9 “4 Stars”

Comments:

“Had a blast! Can’t wait to do it again!” DannieO, Model

“[For future meetups] Stress level of class (i.e, no knowledge, basic, etc.) so not [such] a wide range of experience or [photographers] at least know the basics [before attending].” Jeff Hart, Photographer

“Awesome” Anonymous Photographer

“Very useful!!!” Anonymous Photographer

“Would like to attend a second class.” Theresa Rivers, Photographer

“Thanks Will!!” Kenny K., Photographer

“The class was a great review of basics and gave me an outlook on techniques and methods.”  Anonymous Photographer

Lessons Learned

(1) More time needs to be blocked out for group shooting. We were short by one hour (with only three-and-a-half hours of dedicated shooting) because the presentation of information went fifty minutes longer than I expected and we started fifteen minutes later than expected. Needs to start earlier, cover all learning material, break for lunch, then shoot through the entire afternoon.

(2) Additional pre-planning needs to be invested into the sets. The good news here is that the time investment on my end in the course materials is complete, with perhaps a tad of tweaking. I can focus more energy and attention on this next time to improve the experience and make it less guided ad hoc.

(3) The models were not all “very satisfied” with the level of interaction and instruction. I likely need to work more with the models during the shooting phase to guide and assist them while working with the photographers.

(4) Don’t expect to shoot, Will. You will be way too busy. 😉

Downloads

This page holds downloads for people who might want to have a digital copy of the instructional materials for their later use.

First, there is the Keynote presentation. It isn’t really prepared for use by third-parties as the whole workshop has a strong hands-on component, but it’s here in PDF format.

In addition to a Keynote presentation, I prepared two handouts to support the workshop.

The first handout is a simple, foldable, EV/ISO vs. Aperture/Speed chart. Workshop participants were given these sheets and then folded them down to reveal the aperture/speed combos they could use when setting their cameras manually before shooting.

The second handout shows all the steps of the High-Speed Post-Processing Workflow that I blogged about earlier.

• Download Photography Workshop Presentation
• Download Exposure Values (EV) Handout
• Download Three-Pass Workflow Handout

Other course presenters are welcome to use these materials, provided they credit me and this blog as the source.