Photography Test Run at the Broadway Market

This is the first day of the new and improved London Zest. Saturday was the day of my photography workshop at Studio Time at London Fields. I could not vouch for this place enough. If you're a photo-blogger, this is a great place to start. A full day's learnings and practice gave me the small bit of confidence I would never have obtained had I just stuck to reading my camera manual. 

Photography is a tougher hobby than I anticipated though. So many variables to factor in: lights, focus, angles, shadows and depth of field are some of the things you constantly have to think about as you're handling your camera. It's a constant strive to improve and enhance the quality of your photographs. It's a challenge to ensure that each shot is more precise, more "on purpose" than the previous one; richer, and with more texture. Because at the end of the day, that's the hard bit: getting exactly what you want. It hardly ever happens.

The morning at the studio felt long and tedious, going over the innumerable techniques of photography, understanding the various settings of the SLR, finding my way around the menu page. It also felt strange to be in class again. Soaking it all in, I was desperately trying to remember all of the details the teacher had just mentioned. I struggled to understand the theory without the practice. You see, I've usually been more of a "trial and error" kind of learner.

London Fields is a mad and crazy place on a sunny Spring Saturday. But it's an even crazier and exciting place to go for your first test drive. That was when the fun began. People wearing strange outfits, walking about, playing around and dancing to drums and guitar. Plenty of great material.

A short while after that the teacher took us to Broadway Market, instructing us to capture a variety of depths of field and focus angles as possible. The exercise was simple enough: the market has a great many colourful bits about it; take it all in. It's gonna be hard to screw it up. Here was my first attempt at capturing the wonderfully exciting Broadway Market.

The Everything Stall

The Junk & Jewelry Stall

The Cheese & Sausage Man

The Hamburger Man

The Cupcake Stall

The Cake Stall

The Carrot & Banana Cake stall

The Panty & Bra stall

That was a restrospective of my day of fun in photography land. I would love to hear your feedback on these shots. Please indulge me a little. This was a practice run. And it's just a start! If you're also into photography, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the hobby and how difficult you found it. Is it always this hard or does it become second nature?