http://www.digitaldaysphoto.com/

Last year, one of the first photography seminar/classes I went to was the Digital Days Photography Workshop. It is a two day workshop that travels across the nation presented by Popular Photography Magazine. It is also sponsored by Sony. I thought there would be a lot more promoting of Sony cameras but there wasn’t much at all. There is a Sony booth that is there to answer any questions and to display the Sony cameras and lens. For the photo shoot, there were also Sony Cameras that people could use. The instructor for the workshop is Phil Mistry, a veteran Photojournalist who showed plenty of experience. I thought he was a pretty good instructor that kept the course interesting. He also answered any questions that the attendees had. He showed some of his work and I was pretty impressed by his work.

The workshop is setup as a beginner session and a intermediate session. The one I went to took place in South San Francisco. The beginner session costs $69 and the intermediate session costs $99 and taking both costs $139. Since it is on a weekend, it is a better deal to go to both. The beginner class did cover a lot of the basics about digital photography but it also included useful and important information that is beneficial for everyone. It was not too basic and I felt it was very useful. The second half of the first class included a good tutorial of Adobe Lightroom by Derrick Story. He did a pretty good job of that too since the Digital Days Workshop is also supported by Adobe. Of course Derrick also went over some of his work and promoted his book,  “Digital Photography Pocket Guide”. Of course he also did a book signing for anyone who bought his book and had copies available with him for a discount. I was one of the suckers, I mean buyer of the book and it is actually a decent guide that is nice and small to keep in your camera bag that is a good and handy read.

The second day covered some more advanced topics and also included a fun model shoot. I felt like I actually got more out of the workshop from the first day as fas as skills and technique is concerned. The second day was more fun because you got to do a model shoot. For most beginners, this would probably be the first model shoot so it was exciting. Being my first live model shoot, I really enjoyed it and it sparked my interest in doing more fashion/glamour/portrait photography. For the workshop in San Francisco, we had 4 models and 4 stations and a lot of photographers so it was hard to get good pictures. It was more about the idea of getting a good picture so it worth it to have the opportunity to shoot with a model.

For the basic novice or intermediate photographer, I think the workshop was worth taking. You will definitely take away some knowledge that you may not have known about or have a good refresh of the techniques and skills involved in digital photography.

• Understanding the Basics of Digital Imaging
• Introduction to Adobe Lightroom
• Storage and archiving files
• Basic color calibration
• Transferring images to your computer

• RAW vs. JPEG
• Single Focus or Focus Tracking
• Exposure Compensation
• Portrait lighting with live models to photograph
• Tips & tricks for Photoshop CS3
• More advanced color calibration
• Image critique from live model shoot