F/Stop - Prizewinning Photography - October, 2000

Starting the day off right with the IPS Thursday tradition, we "searched" for an hour for the nearest Starbucks. (Great fellowship enriches concentration, right?!) When we reached the Dallas Arboretum, we were divided into three groups and rotated between three workshops: Portraiture, weddings, and group photography. After a great picnic lunch we enjoyed the beautiful sights as we completed our photographic assignments.

At 4:15 we toured the third largest pro lab in the country. We learned about enlarging, reproducing, and the incredible world of digital imaging. We are looking forward to seeing their newest advertisement . . . a photographic PT Cruiser!

We returned to the training center for a session on photography as a business, and then finished off the day by shooting the Dallas skyline.

—IPS Students Tiffany Cole and Katie Sapp

This morning my roommate and I were so excited about the day that we arrived for wisdom search 15 minutes early. Right after breakfast we got our film and assignments and headed out to the vans for a short ride to the Farmers' Market. Our assignments were: Fill the frame, get a strong center of interest, find leading lines, and show a proper fill flash exposure.

The fresh fruits and vegetables, flowers, and heaps of pumpkins gave opportunity of finding subjects to fulfill our assignments. During the photo shoot we came across a few school groups visiting the market. We had a lot of fun making images of the kids' visit.

This afternoon the instructors spoke on people, macro, and digital photography. We also had several excellent question and answer periods. After dinner we had a critiquing session on our morning's work. We finished up our evening around 8:00 p.m.

—IPS Student James Lane

The Cattle Drive and the Fountain Place, two unique downtown Dallas sights, where we made pictures this morning. There was, however, a catch, today we were sent out with assignments: deep and shallow depth of field, blurred and stopped motion, as well as soft, side lighting was what we were to demonstrate today.

After our exciting morning of making pictures and (hopefully) fulfilling our assignments, we went to our afternoon sessions where Mr. Davidson and Mr. Stanley shared their knowledge of flash photography and composition. Everything we did today has been a great help in furthering our photographic skills and our creativity. The best part is, we still have three days of fun to look forward too!

—IPS Student Meagan McOlin

Picture this . . . you have two and one-half hours to take 72 pictures in Downtown Dallas. This was our first assignment as a student of IPS. Basically we were turned loose downtown to "make images" of whatever jumped out at us. Just when we thought we would never feel our fingers again, we came back to the training center. After we ate lunch, we had a few training sessions to teach us how to create better images. At the end of our day we had an awesome critique session that gave us a chance to see a few shots that our classmates had taken. This is definitely one of the best courses I've ever taken through the Institute and I would recommend it to anyone interested in photography.

—IPS Student Tracie Taylor