Thanks again to everyone for participating in the Workshop. Special thanks to Nick and Marshall for organizing everything. All the Admins are volunteers and funding for this forum come out of their own pocket!

Here are some examples of what was discussed at the workshop:

1. White balance. This lion photo was shot in the middle of the day with the sun beating down. I used manual WB and cooled the photo down by setting the Kelvin number to a low value (don't remember off hand but probably close to 3000).

2. Panning. The composition of this photo was deliberate (took a bunch of shots). Note that I did not follow the rule of thirds here. Why? Because the way I framed this gives the sense that the kid is purposely trying to stay in the frame so he could see what was going on...like swinging past a window.

3. Shoot from interesting angles and keep the background uncluttered. I was laying on the ground for this shot.

4. Perspective. Remember the exercise where you were trying to keep me the same size while you zoomed in and out? This is just an extreme example of how to control foreground and background size. This was not photoshopped - came out of the camera looking like this.

5. Dark background. This was shot in the middle of a sunny day. Just used the same principle I showed you with the Gatorade bottle and the shade under the park bench.

6. Fast shutter to freeze motion. Note again I broke the rule of thirds - for good reasons. If I placed the jumper at the rule of thirds "hot spot" then her shadow would get cut off. If I zoomed out or backed away so the shadow would fit again, then she would have looked too small....get the idea? Also note the simplicity of the background, the lines and symmetry (in fact look at most of my photos - the backgrounds are either very simple or blurred out).

7. Shallow depth of field. There was only a few feet between the subject and the background. I shot this with the aperture wide open (small f-number) to blur out the background.

8. Don't pose the kids or people...9. Forget the "say cheese" shots. 10. And if you have to pose people, use creative composition, shoot at a tilt, etc. so it doesn't look like a snap shot. 11. Kids look best doing what they are good at...having fun. (Don't forget rule of thirds...place the eyes at one of the "hot spots").

And lastly...go shoot some photos, have some fun...and share them with others!

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