Like the rest of the week, Friday was filled with practical lectures, challenging assignments, and definitely a lot of fun. We headed down to the inspiring Old City Park, to put into practice everything we had learned about portraits, flashes, and lighting. The directions were to get four different portrait shots, each one demonstrating concepts learned this week, and our small group had fun juggling reflectors and coming up with crazy setups to get the lighting just right.
Later on, back at the Dallas Ministry Center, we gathered for more instruction and then speed shoots, definitely one of my favorite types of assignments. For the first timed speed shoot that day, our key word was "shine," and it was interesting to see the different creative interpretations other students came up with and which images made the meaning of shine most clear to viewers. On another speed shoot, we practiced a special style of dramatic lighting for portraits called Rembrandt lighting. We had thirty minutes to take the portrait and edit it using Photoshop Elements. I am planning to go home and practice doing a lot of speed shoots, because nobody really wants to sit around for two hours while the photographer tinkers around trying to take a picture. Speed shoots were challenging, but the pressure of a time limit helped us learn to think and work faster and more efficiently.
This course has been excellent, both with the thorough, practical teaching on photography and the wonderful example of the instructors' enthusiasm for using their cameras and their lives to serve the Lord.
—PWP2 Student Meg Gupta
Friday dawned a new day—our last day at Prizewinning Photography II. For our group devotions, I really enjoyed singing a a couple songs and finishing up our video series on leadership. We learned about the five oppositions that leaders face and how leaders should graciously handle criticism. We were encouraged to respond to criticism in such a way as to defend the vision that God has given to us.
After devotions, Mandy taught a class on how to effectively do some fabulous color correction using Adobe Photoshop Elements. It's quite amazing how we can doctor our photos up, so that they look better—though hopefully they'll look fairly good before doing Photoshop. ;)
Our speed photo shoot for the day was to snap a picture of something shiny. It was interesting to see what different people's interpretation of "shiny" was!
In the afternoon, we had a portrait photo shoot. After we students finished our assignments, we got to watch the four instructors take portraits of each other, using a couple reflectors and a few speed lights for fill-flash. That was fun to observe!
At the end of the day, Rowan gave us our certificate of completion for PWP2 and gave a closing thought. We were challenged to ask ourselves—How were we going to use our photography? What is our purpose in taking pictures? May we not be disobedient to the vision that God gave to each one of us! May all who come after us find us faithful!
Before ending our day, we had a little "ice-cream social" and signed each others certificates. Goodbyes were made and some people even took pictures of their friends and themselves with the "evil green box" mode (shh, don't tell!) and we ended PWP2 with many memories that will be sure to last our lifetime!
—PWP2 Student Leah Cross
