Program night June 17th, 2024: My Favorite Trip (continued) and Bring Your Camera

First, we will take about 30 minutes for club business and to finish the “My favorite trip” submissions we were not able to present at our last program night. Then we will try a fun photo exercise. Bring your camera, pick one lens and dress appropriately. It will be handy to have your phone’s timer easily accessible to help you keep track of the time. If you like, bring a small notepad and pen to jot down your observations about this exercise. We will spend 30 minutes around Larkspur Senior Center challenging ourselves with this exercise from Daniel Gregory.

We will meet back in the multipurpose room at the end of the 30 minutes to discuss this exercise. After you have had a chance to evaluate your images, pick your favorite from each of the 5-second, 30-second, and 5-minute intervals, process (or not) as you like and upload them to the Photo Discussions tab on the Cascade Camera Club website. Use the Tortoise and Hare category.  Then join in the conversation.

The Tortoise and The Hare

Adapted from Daniel Gregory’s

10 Exercises for Making More Meaningful Photographs

The tortoise and the hare exercise is about seeing, photographing, time, patience, and awareness. This exercise can reveal subtle changes in your thinking and approach to photography as you experience a change in the duration between shutter clicks.

We have all heard you should ‘work the scene” when photographing a location. But what does that mean. For some it may mean rapid fire shots, for others it may mean soaking in the environment and taking a few shots. We all have a natural sense of time and speed that works best for us. When we are in our rhythm, things are good. Out of rhythm things can go sideways for us. This exercise serves two purposes. The first is for you to experiment and experience different paces of photographing and seeing things to photograph. The second is to identify your response when you feel when you are photographing at your natural rhythm. What does it feel like to know that you are seeing and photographing when you are truly connected with the work?

For this exercise, you will photograph at various time intervals, starting with 5 seconds and gradually extending the time between shots up to every 5 minutes. For this exercise to be effective, you need to follow both the time and photographic image creation requirements.

The exercise encourages you to observe and establish what works best for you when meaningfully seeing and connecting with a subject. How long does it take you to connect? What does it feel like when you aren't connecting versus when you are connecting? What does your body physically feel like? What does that connection feel like when you look through the camera?

We will limit our location to the grounds of the Larkspur Senior Center and our time to about 30 minutes. Take a few minutes to scout a spot, you will stay in that general area for the duration of this exercise.

First you will make a new image (not just a slight shift or zoom, but a new image composition) every 5 seconds for two minutes. This pace can be challenging. Don't overthink it; see, respond, and click. You can walk around. You do not need to stay in one place, but at the end of the two minutes, you should have taken 24 photographs. You'll need to ensure your camera is set up with the correct settings to handle the fast-paced shooting, including adequate focus and exposure settings.

Once you are done with the two minutes, take note of what that experience was like. What was hard? What was good? What did it feel like to photograph at that pace? How did your body physically feel at this pace? Would you always want to photograph like this? Sometimes? Never?

In the next round, make a new image (not just a slight shift or zoom, but a new image composition) every 30 seconds for five minutes. This pace can be challenging but is often starting to get easier for people. Again, don't overthink it; see, respond, and click. You can walk around. You can walk around. You do not need to stay in one place, but at the end of the five minutes, you should have taken 10 photographs.

Once you are done with the five minutes, take note of what that experience was like. What was hard? What was good? What did it feel like to photograph at that pace? How did your body physically feel at this pace? Would you always want to photograph like this? Sometimes? Never?

For the final 15 minutes, make a new image (not just a slight shift or zoom, but a new image composition) every 5 minutes for 15 minutes. You can walk around. You do not need to stay in one place, but at the end of the ten minutes, you should have taken 3 photographs. It may be tempting to make more photographs. Don’t. Limit yourself to one shot every five minutes. Let in the idea that more is not always better.

Once you are done with the 15 minutes, take note of what that experience was like. What was hard? What was good? What did it feel like to photograph at that pace? How did your body physically feel at this pace? Would you always want to photograph like this? Sometimes? Never?