learn more about photography

I registered for the photography courses of AFSAD (Photography Artists’ Association of Ankara) as I told you at my previous entry about this goal.

I’m starting them right after I get back to Ankara.

I’m excited that I’ll be with professionals in a real photography atmosphere!

I’m sure that there will be too many to learn.

Hope that I’m on the right path to improve my photography skills in a professional way.

I decided that I want to take offical photography courses from AFSAD (Photography Artists’ Association of Ankara) when I return back to Ankara.

^{We’ll see if I may be able to arrange my time and money for that.}

I wanna be a good photographer so badly! But it will probably never happen since I’ve been suffering from the disorder called chronic dissatisfaction.

It is so pointless. If I know that I’m never gonna feel myself competent and good about my photography, what all these effort for?

I can’t understand myself at all.

was a bust. So what now?

There’s a class being offered on Monday nights.

Positive is it is relatively inexpensive.

Negative is I am at work by 2am and often work until 5pm on Mondays. The class runs from 6-10. Can I suck it up for a month and do this? I don’t know…

I’ve spent a few hours reading about some important classic photographers such as Diane Arbus, Ansel Adams and Paul Strand and I checked many of their works. I must have seen at least a few hundreds of photographs.

I’m also attracted by a few Magnum Photographers and I currently find Bruno Barbey’s works so veeery remarkable.

So much to read and learn!

I decided that I’m gonna learn more about photography in its historic dimension. If I’m involved in this subject, I should know more about its masters, masterpieces and critics in order to have a better perspective of photography which I really give a shit.

There are already tones of books about photography that I read or checked out this year. Some of those books I remember are:

• Magnum Stories
• Ara Güler – Retrospektif
• Jerry Uelsmann – Other Realities
• Anna Tomczak – Sanctuary
• Faruk Akbaş – Insan Anadolu
• Martin Parr – Small World
• Icons of Photography – The 19th century
• Czech Vision – Avant Garde Photography in Czechoslovakia
• National Geographic – The wildlife photographs
• Susan Sontag – On Photography
• Faruk Akbaş – Fotoğrafta Kompozisyon

I’m hoping to read more and more, and also to have more ideas about what has been going on in the field of photography.

^{P.S: Photo is by Paul Strand, 1916.}

Alright, so I’ve started this goal by buying my first book on Digital Photography. This is more of a beginner’s guide to the basics so I figured that was a good place to start, especially since I want to build on the foundation that I already have.

So I concluded that there are a few things I need to get my photography hobby started.

1)Flash
2)Wide Angle lens 14mm-18mm
3)A few different models

and I need to commit some time every week to trying out some different shots and different lighting. Really, that’s the only way to get better right?

my mum and dad are both photographers for a living and I can take a picture but don’t really understand it as much as I’d like :) Wanna get better so i can give them a run for their money!

a photography group to help in this goal. When do I consider it a success though? do we ever stop learning? I need to modify this.

I now have a Flickr account. It is just calling out to me to be filled. It looks so sad with no photos uploaded to it. I need to get books about photography in general and maybe the instruction book to my camera? And time. I need time to read the materials and take the pictures. I think I won’t get to the learning part until March, when a work contest ends. (I’ll be reading a lot the next few months.)