Our second day of class begins like a scene from a David Attenborough program: the one where the cheetah hunts the gazelle at around 70 miles per hour.  We put cameras in their hands and with the next breath, Sara is going full tilt into the fundamentals of photography.  Come to think of it, that’s pretty much how Mike began yesterday too, diving head first into deep water on the technical workflow side of things.  (Obviously, I have nature television on my mind as I write.)

We spent the day today getting familiar with manual control of making an exposure: using the light meter to balance shutter speed and aperture in order to make a properly exposed image.

This is tricky enough for new photographers but then, in the afternoon, we went into the practical and aesthetic ramifications of those two functions. The students were introduced to the concepts of motion blur and depth of field and they began to experiment with the their choices.  If that seems like a lot for a few hours instruction to 12-15 year-olds then you get some notion of the high caliber of our students.  These guys are sharp and so far, it seems they have a pretty good “eye”.

At the end of the day, we downloaded and edited our photos and they left us behind.  We presumed that we’d need to review the work we’d done on Saturday but the kids didn’t need it.  We started handing out the computers and before we could get to the last group, the first was already downloading.  Those wobbly baby giraffes learned to run quickly and now they are off…let’s see if we can keep them running!

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