I have made it through my first week of school! It is a new experience all around. It’s a very cool atmosphere though! I only have 3 classes, and each are only 1 day a week. They’re 4 hour classes though, which I thought would draaaaaag on, but the time actually goes by really quick. Even this first week of class, we’re so busy already. I already have a ton of homework, which is to be expected since it’s only a 10 week course and by the amount of time we have to meet each week.
My first day was very overwhelming… This class is called Foundations of Photography. Our goal in this class is self-explanatory, which is to learn all of the foundations that we need to be able to succeed in the rest of the photography program. We will be learning all about our cameras, what each setting does, what to do when you have a certain type of lighting, all about composition, etc… Just looking at the topic list of what we will be talking about each week is enough to make me nervous. Each hour we have a 15 minute break, for the purpose of refocusing our minds to be able to take in more information in the next hour. I’ve taken in more information in this first week than I care to take in. This first day helped me to be able to gauge what the next two classes were going to be like, and the workload that I was going to be taking on. So, the next two days weren’t so bad once I had that mindset.
My second class of the week is Design Fundamentals, which focuses on visual design. This class will be helping us to think like designers. Even though I’ll be taking pictures, I still have to think about the design process of the picture before I shoot my subject, so I guess you could consider that designing. The one thing I didn’t like is that we will be drawing in this class. It’s only for the first 3 weeks, but still… I can draw flowers, but that’s about it. I am not an artist in that respect. We had to sketch a drawing of our hand in 5, 10, 15, all the way up to 5 minute intervals. The 5 minute interval wasn’t that much better than the 5 second. Then, you have these people in my class that can whip out a sketch that I couldn’t even come close to drawing in 5 days! The teacher would come around the room after every interval and hold up the ones that were good. Mine never got held up, which was fine with me, cause I didn’t want anybody else to see mine. J
My third class of the week is Imaging 101, which is the Photoshop class!! I think this class will be my favorite by far. I love editing and retouching pictures. I already know a lot about Photoshop, but I haven’t even scratched the surface of all there is to know, so I’m pretty excited. This week, the teacher pretty much went over the basics and started from scratch. How to work on a Mac, the basics of Photoshop, how to import pictures, etc… It was pretty boring, but good to know that I knew all of what he was teaching.
I just keep reminding myself not to get too discouraged or overwhelmed. I have to take it one week at a time, and just know that not everything they’re teaching is going to come easy, but I have to work hard, and I can do that.
