In June, I finally decided to learn how to use my new digital camera. It’s a small Sony Nex-7, which seems easy to use but was causing me a lot of frustration. I decided to sign up for a beginning digital photography workshop at Santa Fe Photographic Workshops a few blocks from where I live.
On our first day, our genial instructor, Rick Allred scared me to death with technical details that I didn’t understand. Rick seemed to sense that some in his class were bewildered because he said he didn’t want to make smoke come out of our ears. Well, smoke was coming out of my ears and I almost decided to drop the class.
Fortunately, I didn’t. The next day we moved beyond the technical aspects of our cameras and began to talk about color and composition, which are the two elements, which interest me the most.
That afternoon we took our first field trip to the plaza in Santa Fe. After living here for twenty years I thought I knew the plaza quite well. However, once I began to use my camera I discovered all kinds of fascinating details that I had missed on my ordinary walks there. For example, a man playing a harp whose hands were very expressive and another man cleaning a Fedex box of graffiti who explained that he takes one day a week to clean this particular box. I didn’t get very many good photos that day, feeling a little shy about taking photos of strangers.
Later in the afternoon, I ventured into the cathedral where I have always thought photography was forbidden. However, people with cell phones were taking pictures all over the place so I decided to risk it. These were the best of my photos. I’m attaching several so you can see what I did during my marvelous week.
Don’t worry about it. Just point and shoot.