My very favorite photography magazine has always been Popular Photography. I currently subscribe to the print version, and receive regular e-mails from them. When I saw an e-mail about their Digital Days seminars coming to both Boston and NYC, I jumped at the chance to attend one (I’m located about halfway between the two cities). I went to the Boston seminar a few weeks ago, and wanted to describe my experience.

The Saturday session is supposed to be for beginners and runs just in the afternoon. The full-day Sunday session covers more advanced topics and includes a live model shoot. Having never photographed people beyond your typical snapshot, I was anxious to try my hand at shooting in a makeshift studio.

I went into the Saturday session with very low expectations. Having shot a film SLR for over 20 years and a digital P&S for almost eight years, I already know the basics. However, I find that when listening to even very basic information, I sometimes pick out a gem that I didn’t already know. The instructor was well seasoned, having been a professional photographer who’s worked in the field for many years (he’s now an editor at Pop Photo), and was very comfortable with the subject matter and the audience. I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon, and actually did pick up on a few new nuggets (such as why a grey card is 18% grey; I already knew it was 18%, but didn’t know why).

I was really looking forward to Sunday. Most of the morning was spent with the same instructor as Saturday, and he indeed did cover more advanced topics (such as color balance and flash). Unfortunately, this time it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. A lot of time was spent on the technical side of things, but very little was spent on what goes into making a better picture. Oh sure, there was mention of the rule of thirds, but I was hoping for more tips and ideas for composition and lighting.

Late in the morning, we went into the model shoot. There were five shooting stations set up with backdrops and modeling lights. There were seven models and a variety of outfits and props. Here again, I was disappointed. At no point were we given pointers on what would make a high-quality shot. After spending two half days learning the technical side of things, we were let loose and simply told to take pictures.

I was also frustrated by the setups. First, there were about 80 people attending the seminar, all trying to get the best angle at just five shooting stations. I spent half the time just trying to get a clear line of sight past everyone’s arms and shoulders to even take a photo. The other bigger frustration was the lighting. Each station had just two modeling lights providing illumination, and sometimes one of those lights was turned off. We were told to set our cameras to ISO 800 and to open our apertures full. Even with that, I had a terrible time holding my camera steady enough to get a sharp picture with no camera shake (and I have a VR–vibration reduction—lens). I did OK with a wide angle, but switching to a longer lens to get in close on the model was a disaster. I took over 240 pictures in less than an hour and was happy with fewer than a dozen of them. So, having that many people shooting at once and without strobes was an experience I thought was a limited success. You can find some of the photos I felt were good enough to share on Flickr.

After lunch, things got much better. There was another instructor who specialized in the software side of things, and he went through a complete workflow using Adobe Lightroom. Since I also use Lightroom, I really enjoyed learning some new techniques. He also used some of the photos taken during the model shoot for a critiquing session, which is what I’d been hoping for earlier in the day. He gave us some tips and pointers that would have been helpful before the model shoot. He even used one of my shots to explain an artifact that I’d run into in the past and couldn’t figure out how to get rid of.

The fun didn’t end when I left Boston. We were told that there is a Facebook group where seminar alums can gather and chat, but I prefer Flickr. I was able to find photos on Flickr taken by other photographers at both this seminar and others around the country. However, I was surprised that there was no Digital Days group. So, I started one. There are close to 100 photos there at this writing, and I’m hoping more people search for such a group when they get home from their own seminar and add their photos.

Overall, I was very glad I attended and truly enjoyed the majority of the seminar. While the first day was billed as for beginners, it definitely was not for point-and-shoot users. Since most of the seminar dealt with the technical side of things, anyone planning to attend really needs to be using an SLR with its power and flexibility to appreciate the information being taught. Finally, I thank Popular Photography for the opportunity to attend.

I’ve had a passion for photography since childhood. I remember my first positive camera experience was during an elementary school field trip to a farm. I had my cheap little plastic camera filled with 126 film. At one point, I saw a mother horse with her foal standing next to her in the classic horse pose. I excitedly framed and took the picture. I couldn’t wait to get the prints back. When I finally had the photo in hand, I was sorely disappointed to discover that while my viewfinder had a clear view of the animals, the lens the film used to see the world was smack dab behind a part of the wire fence. My classic picture had a big line through the middle of it, but I was hooked just the same.

In my early teens, I found an old 35mm camera while cleaning out my grandmother’s house. It was a completely mechanical rangefinder camera with no flash or light meter, but I was eager to start experimenting. In those days, the boxes that 35mm film came in included some exposure guidelines printed on the inside. So, using those guidelines, I started taking pictures, recording the exposure settings for each photo so I could match them up with the print and could fine tune my exposure guesses. I took quite a few nice pictures with that camera, including one of Cinderella Castle at Disney World that hung on my bedroom wall for years.

When I got my first summer job at age 16, the first thing I bought with my newly earned money was a Minolta XG7 SLR and flash. Automatic cameras were just starting to appear on the market, and the XG7 was an early aperture-priority model. That camera saw me through high school (where I was the yearbook photography editor), college (where I won an on-campus photography contest), and the births of my first three kids.

When digital point-and-shoot cameras started becoming affordable, I jumped at the chance to go digital, so bought an Olympus D460 in 2001, just in time for the birth of my fourth child. I actually had both cameras in the hospital with me because I was scared to death I’d do something stupid and lose all my digital photos.

I didn’t miss the expense of film and processing, nor the restriction to carefully pick and choose what I spent exposures on, but I did miss the features, power, and flexibility of an SLR. I kept an eye on the market, but with four young kids, spending a four figure amount on a camera just wasn’t in the cards.

Last summer, I began noticing how much the price of entry-level DSLR cameras had dropped. I fixed my sights on the $450 Nikon D40 and began scraping together the cash to buy one. An unexpected Christmas bonus came along, and I went straight to the camera store to finally get my digital SLR. I was able to move up to the D80, got a free zoom lens in the deal, and was in heaven.

So for the past four months, I’ve been rediscovering creative photography and have been living on Flickr and Twitter, looking at all kinds of photos and listening to lots of podcasts. I’m planning to add a photo gallery here on the blog shortly, but you can also see my stuff over on Flickr. I still have a lot to learn, but I’m loving it.

Several years ago, when digital cameras were starting to make inroads into the film market, old-timers claimed that, while digital was indeed improving, it would never replace film for clarity, color, and sharpness. Well, The Gadget Show, based in England, decided to put the latest technology to the test. They used a pair of Nikon bodies, one digital and the other film, with a common lens, studio, and subject matter. Then they blew the images up to several stories high, hung them outside, and compared the images. There is a clear difference between the two, and the results are both surprising and, for me, extremely pleasing. Give it a watch.

There are some incredibly powerful and beautiful photos that came from 2008’s world events over at Boston.com that I’ve really enjoyed viewing. Go check it out. (Also Part 2 and Part 3.)

One of my new favorite blogs is Photoshop Disasters. They specialize in drawing attention to botched Photoshop jobs, similar to the one where the Iranians tried to pull the wool over our eyes by transforming three missile launches into four. The picture here appeared on the TV Guide web site in a special section about Olympians to watch. You’ve got to wonder how, in the fraction of a second that swimmers pop their head out of the water for a gulp of air, Michael Phelps was able to move his goggles up off his eyes, open his eyes wide, get his chin in front of the water, and manage a smile, all for the camera. )