Our Worlds Collide! Again!

Ran into the classroom 10 minutes late for the Photoshop class and I really thought that door had a little bit more give to it. So basically I fell into the Photoshop class. And came face to face with the poor man I had interrogated during my Basic class. One of the teachers from the Basic Photography class is the Photoshop class teacher. Oh shit.

I am constantly reminded, and reminding myself, during each and every one of these classes that THERE IS A REASON WHY THESE PEOPLE ARE PHOTOGRAPHERS. Besides their natural talent, I mean. They are not great orators. They talk like ... ... ... for want of a better term, an engineer trained in accounting.

Everything is stated matter of factly, calmly, politely. Fine. But there's this flow that they have. Like everything that has to be said, will be said. Eventually. I'll get to the point sometime this century, and if you'd just be a little bit patient and stop interrupting me, missy, I'll get to it before America's Next Top Model starts at 10 pm. Don't worry, you'll only miss the first 10 minutes.

I remember this teacher well because he started off with the spiel about how in the good ole days when we had the film cameras, we used to yadda yadda yadda. It's all well and fine (and actually quite relevant) when we're discussing camera parts in the Basic class. But it does start to come off a little bit off the cuff, doncha think, if we're in THE PHOTOSHOP CLASS. He also showed us his beautiful to die for shots of wild flowers and grass in his "Painting with Photography" series, which always sets off the inevitable stream of questions from the uninitiated, together with his stream of engineer-accountant-cryptic responses.

How did you do that? What kind of lighting did you use and where did you put it?

I used a small torchlight. (at this point, he takes out a little penlight and shines it at us)

Where did you put the torchlight and how did you achieve all-round lighting like that and did you use a tripod what is the shutterspeed and lens aperture?

You shine the torchlight behind the leaf.

At this point, I sent a text message ("Somebody kill me now") to The Husband.

I previously asked him about 20 similar questions before I got the answer: It puts the wildflowers in the basket (or it gets the hose, ha ha ha) then it sets the camera on 60 seconds exposure, F22, tripod, ISO 100 and then puts out the light and cavorts around the room in a black tee shirt shining the torchlight on the wildflower until every aspect of the flower is picked up by the camera. Try not to cavort too quickly or the wildflower moves with the air and the image is blurred. And don't shine the light on yourself, dumbass.

It took almost 10 minutes of questions to elicit that information after which everyone looked slightly fidgety/ bored and my face was all red.

After tonight's lecture drew painfully to a close (it was like moving underwater), he said "Any questions" and my hand flew up. What the heck. We only live once. I might as well ask him all my stupid questions now. So I asked my one single most important burning question, which has plagued me for the entire year I've been taking classes and which nobody has been able to give me a satisfactory answer. And then I made him sit with me at my laptop and show me all the commands and functions, until I GOT IT RIGHT. Damn straight. Now I just need to practise and I'll be fucking unstoppable.