Just Back from the TDS Fall Photography Workshop

I’m just home after spending yesterday and today at Derrick Story’s Fall Photography Workshop up in Santa Rosa. Derrick – who has a delightful photography blog at The Digital Story and a great weekly podcast available in iTunes – spent these two days taking a group of eight students through a wide variety of photography topics.

This was my third or fourth photography workshop in the last year – and it was far and away the best. Derrick’s hit on a near perfect combination – setting, topics, involvement with other students, unique photographic opportunities – along with some great instruction. Yesterday, for example, we spent about 4 hours in class and then left for a 3 hour photo shoot at Safari West – here’s my Flickr set from that adventure – and see the pair of white rhinos above kicking up some dust! Click here to see our group after our safari (that’s me on the left)!

Today, after a few hours of workshop instruction on portrait photography and the use of flash, reflectors, diffusers, etc., we set out to work with two models who helped us learn much more about outdoor portrait shooting. This was a really unique and valuable experience for us – as we put our new skills to use out in the field.

Somewhat amazingly, all of us in the class were Canon shooters – and we were all roughly at the same level – which made for a near ideal instruction environment. We were also all Mac users – and although we split between Aperture (most) and Lightroom (a few), again we were roughly at the same level.

If you’re interested in a photography workshop that’s among the best, you might want to sign up to be on Derrick’s reserve list for future workshops. He’s planning several for 2011 – and I can’t recommend them highly enough! To be added to the notification list, contact him via email: derrick@thedigitalstory.com