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| Ronald Garcia gives a lecture on Basic Photography to kids at Cypress Towers |
Saturday, 8:57 AM. Today's “Moms and Kids Day” and the photography workshop by Ronald Garcia starts at 9 AM.
Good grief, three minutes to the event and Cole was still in dreamland while I was between checking my mails and giving in to the demands of the little one who was running around and grabbing everything she could with her chubby little hands.
“Coleyyyyyyymolleeyyyy! It's 8:57!” Even Mr Young bolted up from the bed and asked why the alarm didn't go off.
“My fault. Forgot to set the alarm,” I confessed.
Cole jumped up from the bed, took a really quick shower, grabbed his camera and ran out the door. Good thing the event was just at the clubhouse 22 floors below and 10 short leaps away. He got there thinking he was very late for the workshop but then he was actually the first kid to arrive at the venue.
“Thank God they did not play 'Gangnam Style' while we were waiting for the others to arrive,” he told me earlier tonight.
“What kind of music did they play then?” I asked, amused and very much grateful that the kid has grown good taste in music. Mr Young and I would never forgive ourselves if our soon-to-be 11-year-old listened to the trash that half the population on this planet listen to these days.
“Mostly Diana Krall.” So I was informed.
I was the one who got there late because I had to give Attika her morning bath. When I arrived at the clubhouse Ronald was halfway through the workshop but I was able to pick up a lot of things (mostly things Mr Young already taught me many times before, but then being a good student's never really been part of my scanty positive traits). I was mostly interested in taking good photos of moving subjects—an area where I mostly fail. I've never taken any photography lessons and curiosity played a great role for me today.
Apart from being a great photographer, it turned out that Ronald could also work really well with kids. His lecture was delivered in a language that kids and all the other attendees were comfortable in even when he got to the more technical part of photography.
It got me thinking for a second there. It's wonderful that people are so much into photography now, even giving birth to the word “cam-whoring” and whatnot. In a conversation with veteran photographers Rod Banzon and Manny Fernandez years ago in the editorial box of the Big C Magazine where I was Lifestyle Editor, they expressed their heartache over how photography's been lambasted by the advent of digital cameras. Today, everyone who can afford a digital camera is a photographer. I still wouldn't place that as a parallel statement to Robert Fulghum's “Anyone who sings is a singer.”
I found this poster on Facebook and anyone who understands what the bitching is all about would give this one a resounding “like”.
Cole picked up the hobby four years ago. His first camera was an instamatic analogue camera (with an underwater casing) and his first photos were of a rally in UP, then our humble homestead. Mr Young, otherwise known as his dad, had given him his first lessons and those lessons continue at present. Lucky for us I guess because we have a professional photographer at home. Mr Young completed his professional training in the war zones of Mindanao prior to his stint as stringer for CNN and BBC when we were still in college.
“Mr Garcia asked me what got me interested in photography,” Cole told me.
“And?”
“I told him you're a photographer and so I also got interested in it. I also told him you gave me your camera.”
No, no, no, a photographer I am not. I have had some bouts with luck when my photographs were published. I also try sometimes, like a happy little fish (I've some photos here). But to my mind, a photographer is strictly somebody who's had formal training. So clearly, I'm not one of them. I'm just another one of Mr Young's absentee students.
By the way, it was also Cole's first photography workshop and he said that he had so much fun.
It would also help if they got their information from experts such as multi-awarded photographer Ronald Garcia and allow them to decide on their own if they want to pursue it or not. All this as opposed to just handing over to them an expensive piece of equipment and letting them do things all because everyone else is doing it.
I think young people should be taught the value of appreciating an art form by exposing them to the right source of knowledge.
It would also help if they got their information from experts such as multi-awarded photographer Ronald Garcia and allow them to decide on their own if they want to pursue it or not. All this as opposed to just handing over to them an expensive piece of equipment and letting them do things all because everyone else is doing it.
Just my two cents worth.
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| Cole asks Mr Garcia about ISO |
The event was sponsored by Ascof Lagundi and Cypress Towers, DMCI.
