What happened when .....

~ I attended a creative plant gardening and photography workshop. I still get ridicously excited by late presents and recently enjoyed a belated Christmas gift. Himself having kindly treated me to a new camera at Christmas threw in an extra ~ a one day creative photography workshop which I attended a couple of weeks ago. The workshop was held at Bluebell Cottage Gardens/Lodge Lane Nursery where I have attended a couple of workshops previously on the subject of plant propagation.



Venturing onto a photography course was a new venture for me and I was somewhat apprehensive before I arrived. When chosing my new camera I debated long and hard whether to enter the realms of a DSLR. However after much reading about the subject and with welcome and valuable advice from fellow bloggers Karen, Shirl and the Garden MS S I decided that this would be too big a step for me. Instead I went for a more sophisticated compact camera which has a seemingly bewildering array of fiddly bits, bells and whistles on it. I was hoping to be more familiar with all the bits and bobs before the course but as usual the best laid plans of mice and men ......... Luckily there were only five of us there on the day and it was a most non threatening environment. Our tutor Andrew Williams was a former engineer who had gone into photography later in life.



The morning whizzed by quickly as Andrew delivered a well illustrated presentation to us - some of it went over my head being of a somewhat technical nature but other bits registered and have been digested. Then a quick tour round the garden so that we knew its layout. We were asked to think about possible shots that we might like to take and or a theme that we would like to concentrate on. After an al fresco lunch we were let loose in the garden and nursery to take photos to our hearts content. Luckily the course was held on a day when the garden and nursery are not open to the public so we did not have to contend with people popping up everywhere. Back then to base, where Andrew downloaded a few of our respective photos so that we could get some constructive criticism from the rest of the group. I left feeling more confident about my new camera and certainly picked up a number of useful hints and tips, including suggestions of reading material and websites. I will include these in another post later this month. In the meantime I am off to have fun putting my new found knowledge into practice.