I thought I would start this blog with a quick introduction to myself. This seems to be the traditional technique going by the other blogs that I have read.
I suppose I have always been interested in photography and taking photographs. I bought my first camera at a school jumble sale when I was probably 11 or 12. It took 120 film, had no adjustments but I thought it was wonderful. This lasted me probably until I was in my late teens and I suppose that was a period when I went to university when I didn't have a camera for a while. I then bought my first SLR which was a Ricoh and gradually added to the lenses. I remember the first SLR that I had needing a rangefinder which came in a little brown case although I may be mixing this up.
I think my first autofocus camera was probably a Canon and I have stayed with Canon ever since going through a range of cameras. Recently I was able to upgrade to the Canon 6D which as a technological toy is wonderful!
However I have never really looked at how to take photographs, I have thought at times about contrast, depth of field, framing, etc but never really knew what I was doing.
Now that our children are grown up and left home and I have a bit more time to myself I thought it would be fun to actually look at how to take photographs, try and understand something more about principles and become a better photographer rather than a better technician.
I spent quite a lot of time looking around at photography courses and a friend of mine did a part-time course at University but I work full-time and wouldn't be able to go down that route. I looked at the Open University and from there came to the Open College of the Arts. so I have signed up for the first module Expressing Your Vision and we will see what happens.
