JPG Magazine: Stories: How To: Teach Yourself What's Important

Teach Yourself What's Important - Again

By Dale Scherfling

11 May 2007

"If you want to learn your craft, teach it."

That's the first lesson I learned in my student teaching days. The second was to teach one or two practical things each day that your students could put to immediate use. A good beginning made further learning that much easier.

"Don't try to teach an entire semester in one session," our faculty mentors said. "Focus on an important starting point and build from there."

Those two pieces of advice came flooding back recently as I unpacked my new Canon EOS 30D. Not one but two 199-page mini novel instruction manuals - one in English and one in Spanish - fell open before me. They might as well have been Greek. For a second I began to panic. What's all this? Where do I begin?

"Break it down and find a starting point," a tiny voice from my past whispered. I could almost hear my mentor's words: "Start with what YOU need to know."

Good advice. I had been a staff photographer on both military and civilian newspapers long before I became a teacher but I don't think I ever really began to learn until I broke it down for others. That's when my own personal shooting found new life. But that had been back in the film days, years before. Some of this digital stuff was still new to me. Thumbing through all that technical jargon in the instruction manual, with all the graphs and tables, wasn't what I needed. All I needed was to know what this camera could do for me now.

"Spot metering. How good is this camera's metering when I need it?" I asked, re-directing myself to the most important matters. Exposure control was as a top priority in my personal style of street shooting. "Oh yeah, focus too. How quick and accurate is the automatic focus feature?"

Skipping the bells and whistles, I located these controls and selected Center-weighted average metering and One-Shot AF (Automatic Focus) for Still Subjects as my starting point and headed out for the real world to give it a try. After an hour in the park and on a bus, shooting faces in open shade and using the camera's image-enlarging feature for instant feedback and frame-by-frame comparison, I learned more than I could have in a week of reading. I had the manual in my hip pocket, available If I needed it but other than a couple of quick reference glances, I made out pretty well by feel, trial and error, and on-the-spot corrections.

By careful and deliberate red-dot positioning on the most important part of the faces - namely around the eyes, I got to know the camera's reaction time and accuracy in both metering and focus. In a short session of hands-on testing of both the equipment and myself I began to acquire a feel of partnership with the new camera - something you don't pick up in manuals. I discovered that selective shooting and attention to light condition detail - things I already knew - would make it easier for the camera to do its work. While I learned my new camera, I was reminded again and again of skills we had practiced years before.

Get back to the things that matter most in your style of shooting. I got back there again and it was fun. I can still learn new things later, as I go. In short, if you really want to perfect your craft, teach it, I was told a long time ago.

It looks like I found a new student.

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