Photography Course

I had a great flight to London. It was an overnight flight and I actually slept most of the way. My flat is great; unbelievable location. The streets around Notting Hill are teeming with life, just the contrast to the arctic I was looking for. I spent the first week here on a digital SLR photography course at the London School of Photography. The course was amazing. My instructor was Alex Mita who is also a photojournalist. I learned so much and can't wait to work on all my new skills. Here are a few of my pictures from the week.


The view out on to Oxford Street from our classroom window.

Using the fountain in Trafalgar Square to practice freezing and blurring motion.
A homework assignment in China Town.

Alex sent us out into the streets of Soho to take portraits of people. We had to ask people to pose for us.

Photographing elements of design at Covent Garden.

Creative use of flash (portrait of Alex).

Painting with light. This will be a great project to do with kids in school next year. Tons of possibilities and I can operate the camera on a tri-pod while the kids do the painting.

Self-portrait assignment in my flat.

Frame in a frame composition practice (one of my classmates).

The course finished on Friday. At the end of the day, Alex invited us to come along with him while he photographed an event. He had heard that a flash mob event was going to take place at the Liverpool Street train station. The event was a mass moonwalk to celebrate the music of Michael Jackson. A flash mob event is organized virally, the word spreads by e-mail, text, Twitter, Facebook, etc. The messaging was started by Jackson fan Milo Yiannopoulos at 10:00 am. He said that he wanted people to rember Jackson for his music in spite of all the other noise around his death. The crowd was huge, and so was the media attention. It was a perfect opportunity to practice photography. It was a challenge to get close enough to see anything and to get some photos of people dancing, rather than photos of media. Here are a few of mine.

They're Bad. There wasn't much space for moon walking, but the crowd sang and danced along with Billy Jean, Bad and Thriller. In spite of the heat and crowding, it was a fabulous event, full of goodwill and shared celebration. Even the police were smiling (if not dancing and singing) Event organizer talking to media. Don't ask me.

I bought my camera last August, before I moved to the arctic and greatly enjoyed it all year. However, I never got out of auto mode. I can't believe the difference now in terms of possible ways of doing things. No great photos yet, by any means, but I'm looking forward to experimenting and learning more.

Two more weeks in London. I am in the final weeks of my travel writing course at Ryerson. I have really enjoyed. My writing project for the course will be a travel piece about my photography course. Today is Sunday and I am going to spend the rest of the day in Kensington Palace Gardens (5 minutes from my flat) and Hyde Park taking pictures.The weather has been perfect since I got here. Crystal says Uraguay is freezing. Go figure.