Point And Shoot Beginners

Filmsters Academy celebrates 10 years of student moviemaking

A teenager who runs away to a gypsy cult.

And a degree-toting plant named Dr. Cactus.

It's just standard fodder at Filmsters Academy.

The two-week camp celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, with students ages 11 to 19 churning out short films. The teens write, shoot, edit and act in the movies, which will be shown tomorrow night at The Key School.

"It's work, but it's fun work," said Natalie Gibson, 13, of Annapolis.

The academy takes over almost an entire building at the private school in Annapolis, using seven different rooms for various tasks. The students are divided into groups by age and film experience: beginners, intermediate and advanced.

The cost ranges from $695 to $1,450, depending on the group, but scholarships are available. Beginners camp only runs one week, while the others run for two. Advanced students even come on weekends, and also get the chance to shoot off-campus and attract outside actors.

Many teens are repeat campers and look forward to their shot at moviemaking the whole summer. One boy was so excited about coming he had a countdown to the start of the academy posted on his Facebook page.

"The best feeling is to see these kids who sit in a classroom like deers in the headlights on day one and become artists," said Patti White, who founded the camp with Lee Anderson. "They find themselves and their talents."

White and Anderson are filmmakers who run an Annapolis company called Filmsters. The academy got started after a two-fold push. First, White's son, Trevor, now 26, and his friends started dabbling in video. Then, parents of other students kept asking the women to teach their children.

Filmsters Academy kicked off with four staff and 12 students. This year, there are 30 staff and interns and 66 students.

"You get a real taste of what the business is like," said David Kirchner, 16, of Edgewater, who was helping another student with the camera earlier this week on a film called "Bus Stop." "It's a very fun way to learn about how to make films.

Is there any good digital photography forum for beginners like me ...

Http://www.cambridgeincolor.com

Also, all the major camera companies – Sony, Pentax, Olympus, Nikon, Canon – have web sites that offer tutorials on every camera model they sell.

A very valuable resource came with your camera – the Owner’s Manual. Reading & studying it will prove immensely beneficial. You have to know all the features of your camera and what they do and how, when and why to use them before you can begin applying any knowledge gained from the referenced sites.

Good photography requires thinking and thinking requires time. You must think about your composition, lighting and exposure before releasing the shutter. If someone tells you to “Just go out and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot to gain experience” in my opinion you should ignore them. I call that the “machine gunner mentality” – take 300 pictures and hope – HOPE – a few come out good enough to keep. That isn’t photography – its just taking snapshots and you can do that with a simple point & shoot digicam. The idea is to use the knowledge you’ve learned about light, composition and exposure to make a photograph. I encourage what I call the “sniper mentality” – make one exposure, make one good picture. So don’t fall victim to the idea that quantity trumps quality – it doesn’t. I’ve never heard of a contest for who can take the most pictures in a day.

Ansel Adams said it best: “Pictures are not taken, they are made.”

Remember this: “It isn’t the camera its the photographer.” I don’t care what camera you have and what bells and whistles it has the bottom line is its still just a dumb box. The results are totally dependent on you the person using that dumb box. Your knowledge and skill will determine how good or bad your photographs are. A caveat: Almost all of my photography is done with the camera set to Aperture Priority. I do a lot of landscape photography and my goal is to achieve the maximum depth of field so I control the aperture (aka f-stop) and let the camera choose a shutter speed. Since my camera is always on a tripod when shooting landscapes I don’t worry about a slow shutter speed.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drifter45h/4032748624/ I tried several compositions of this scene but this is my favorite.

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