Want To Take Photos Full of Heart Without Figuring It Out On Your Own?

Dear Friends,

I love photography! It has brought me all the joy and reward I have in my life today.

I have gone back through so many of my different phases with photography to understand the process of learning so I can be a better teacher.

One of the things that I love to relive is how I started to take photos with conviction, photos that made me stop in my tracks in the darkroom when they appeared, photos that had soul and a lot of heart. The photos that were no longer capturing a scene but were capturing life and a story.

Here’s what I have learnt:

To take photos full of heart you need to master the basics of photography, understand composition, shutter speed and ISO then you need to know who you are!!

Waddya mean I can hear you saying? You need to dial into who you are as a person, to be awake to life and the moments that touch you, that mean something to you, that you want to capture in all their beauty.

To do this you need to know your values, what you stand for, what excites you, what motivates you and the wonderful thing is to profoundly know this stuff you can’t do it from your lounge-room chair. You have to get out there amongst life and open yourself and your heart. You need to decide to be available to take the next step and channel all those photos that are stilling calling you but you just can’t capture.

Life and situations call and you have to be willing to risk a little of you every day and in every photo and when you risk a little of yourself (and I don’t mean getting beaten up by a gang) the universe rewards you with magic.

Risking something might look like asking a stranger to take their photo, taking a different route in a familiar neighbourhood, booking a holiday to a new destination or doing something you have only dreamed about doing but never done. Risking might be standing in the one place for 30 mins waiting for the perfect moment, it might be telling your husband it’s your time and leave them to prepare breakfast and go for a morning walk.

Teaching manual photography requires patience and time, my true love is teaching something else. It’s teaching the next step, how to see, how to feel, how to take an idea, an image, a story and give it wings.

Last week I flew half way around the world to Hawaii to take my learning to a next step and yes I could have muddled through and figured some of it out on my own but I loved being catapulted to a new level with new learning and in a group. What I have learnt not only from teaching photography but being in a group is that you learn just as much from the group as you do from the teachers.

These photos were taken in beautiful Puglia in Italy that has everyone around the world with their knickers in a knot (my Aunty loved this expression and I thought of her today) where I will be taking a group of photographers to a new level in their photography.

Our Classroom in Martina Franca ready for the photographers

If you feel like risking a little, living a lot and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone to take photos you only dared to take, we would love you to join us.