CLASS, CLASS, IN ITS OWN CLASS

For a long time I have been wanting…wanting and waint to hangout with local photographers in Auckland. I started of by googling on the internet for NZ photography forums but to my disappointment I hardly found any good ones. There’s hardly any in existence and even there are they are not so popular and relatively small. Maybe I am missing out something? So here was I continually searching for photography related community and I was suddenly reminded to join local photography clubs. So I googled again and there were plenty and top of the list there was this Auckland Photography Society (APS) located in Remuera. WoW! WOW!!

So I went ahead by myself and attended the first night of their meeting and it was their last formal session in 2009. I was so blessed because tonight’s workshop topic was about FASHION. 5 of the members previously had an opportunity to go through a series of short fashion classes and had opportunities to shoot about 20-30 models, a few among them were even professionals. So basically they shared the challenges and stress they were put under even though there was one professional fashion photographer at present to guide them. It was quite fun learning from their trails and errors and they even put together a slideshow of their work. Fun! After the workshop I had chance viewing some of the photos took by the Michael the fashion photographer and we had time asking questions etc it was really rewarding. Their final gathering will be their End of Year Award Evening and I think I am definitely more than interested, if time allows after a full day photoshoot that day.

For probably the first time ever, my favourite photographer Jasmine Star will be hosting a workshop in January 2010. What’s more? She’s put up a contest on her blog and THE winner will win a seat to her fabulous workshop. How fabulous (not my fav vocab but that’s the word she uses often) is that? I will need to put some thoughts in planning my shot and try my best not to forget about this contest! Thanks to Justin I now have some ideas to work with and hope it will work. The funniest thing is that over here in New Zealand we are actually living in their future (compared to US). That’s what I call an absolute (time) advantage! It feels like I am getting an extension. But only feels like it. Haha!!

Since the very first day photography was introduced to this world, photos were presented in black-and-white or in the form of sepia only. Till today, B&W never loses its charm. It’s still the most favourite colour theme especially to people who desire to achieve artistic and classic effects. While there are millions of colours available nowadays B&W stands in its own class. It’s just like when you are meeting a line of people from left to right, the ones that have the most characters in its colour and interesting features may stand out. However, B&W is like that person who’s standing at the 2nd place to the right who remains cool, quiet and calm. This is a person who doesn’t give you much “popping effect”, but the more you talk to him the more you want to know this person, and interestingly the more you get to know this person there are more left to be discovered. That’s the magic of B&W.

B&W doesn’t always work. There are times it just won’t work in photography. But when it does work, it’s magical. While some of the clients in our demography welcome B&W, there are still a huge amount of people who prefer the popping colours. Personally, I really like B&W or even the low saturated, muted colours which bring in a sense of depth and substance to the image. Rebekah Elena, a young photographer in US told me how much she adores B&W and she said “if you shoot in colour you are shooting their clothes, but if you shoot in black and white you capture their souls”. Well said Beki!