Ohohoy!

Pardon the wordplay but it’s true.  Or so says the lecturer at a basic photography seminar I recently attended.  The burden to prove that it is indeed not the gear but the photographer fell more heavily on yours truly as I sat with a couple dozen of DSLR-toting shutterbug wannabes, including my sister, while I tried hard to conceal the content of my cute little black bag: a kick-ass but out-of-place Panasonic Lumix LX3.  I had never felt so alone.  I didn’t feel the full impact of my folly until the lecturer asked us to bring out our cameras and check our viewfinder.  I’m telling you, it was a Kodak moment in a WTF sort of way.  

Anyways, being the odd one out in the seminar had its benefits.  For one, the lecturer seemed more forgiving of the high-ISO noise in my photo.  I also thought I was being given more attention by my mentor during breaks just to patiently answer my queries, from the silly “Will I ever progress to a serious photographer using my Panny?” to the sillier “Why Canon and not Olympus?”  One time Mr. Lecturer took his cigarette break outside the studio (where he usually smokes) to join me and my sister in our own puffing session even as he tried to further comfort me with his “indian/pana” analogy.  Lastly, he took out photos he had taken with a point and shoot camera and told me to check them out, perhaps to nail down the point that I shouldn’t be too worried about my gear.

Post-processed food, anyone?

As soon as my teacher finished his lecture on Photoshop, I quickly realized what he meant from day one.  Call it a distortion of the true lesson that he wanted to impart, but my mentor just opened my eyes to the magnitude of things I could do AFTER taking a shot. Ohohoy!  Now I can, ahem, process my crap and turn them into, hmm, semi-crap.  And I got a CD from the seminar containing the most powerful things one can do with mighty PS.  Mr. A may be salivating right now and just about getting ready to show me the money , but I am under strict instruction from my mentor that yes, I can pay it forward by sharing the knowledge I gained from attending his seminar, but no, I cannot share the CD I got from him for the very sensible reason that it was five nights of my life that I spent learning, not to mention it was my hard-earned Gs that I paid for those nights.  As it is an imperfect world that we live in, everything will boil down to how my friendship with Mr. A holds up.  And to the offer he will dangle that he hopes I can’t resist.

Indeed, one seminar does not a photographer make.  I don’t even feel the urge to upgrade my pana right now.  Give or take a few more months taking pictures and mastering Photoshop and joining photography clubs, I will be able to know where my future is heading.

Just don’t ask me to check my viewfinder.

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