Capturing the Everyday | A Review

I've never really felt compelled to write a review on any photography workshop I've taken in the past.

Until now.

I just wrapped up Capturing the Everyday | Environmental Portraiture with Children over at In Beauty & Chaos last week and I'm still on a workshop high from all that I've learned. Kerry Varnum taught this class with perfection and ease. She really understands how important it is for us as photographers or as "happy hobbyists" to be able to capture moments and create stories within our images.

When I first started the class I was really apprehensive. My daughter is only 14 months old and I'm not around other children to be able to create these storytelling images that I have loved from Kerry since I started following her work about a year ago. I emailed Kerry expressing my concern and she assured me that I would have no problem with this class and I would be able to capture those storytelling moments as well.

She was right.

Within the first week I took one of my most favorite pictures to date.

This one:

This picture of my daughter really shows a big story part of our life. Sink baths at Grandmas are a bi-weekly thing when my husband works nights and my little girl LOVES them. As you can tell by her expression. I love how this picture captures my daughters happiness and my mother in laws happiness as well.

Throughout this course I learned how to capture not just her attention, but the attention of any child in front of my camera. I learned about color, composure and most important, how to tell a story with a picture. This class was SO amazing and I'm so glad that my husband was kind enough to give me this wonderful class as a Mother's Day gift.

I should mention that I took this class as a Study Along and not Full Participation. I think I would have been happier over in FP with more feedback and criticism but hey, ya do what ya can.

I think the best part of this class is that I'm now confident in taking portraits of my daughter that I know are more than just regular snapshots. I CAN create a story and make an image more interesting and now I understand how to do it better. I'll probably never measure up to Kerry because she's a storytelling genius but hey, I try. :-)

I'm not good at writing reviews because, like I said, I've never felt compelled to write one. But I really loved this course and I want everyone to know it and hopefully it will run again so you have the chance to take it too!

I encourage all of you to check out Kerry's work and really consider taking this workshop on the next run.

Kerry's Facebook Page

Kerry's Website

And as I mentioned before, this class was taken on the In Beauty & Chaos forum. (If you're a photographer and not a forum member, you should be!)

Here are some of my favorite images from the class.

xxx

Ryan