This weekend I attended one of the weekend workshops offered by Rocky Mountain School of Photography.  I’m not planning to turn this into a commercial for RMSP, but I did enjoy it and I learned quite a bit that I hope/plan to try to use  in my photography.  A flier landed in my mailbox in early December and, since the price was right, I signed up almost right away, figuring that it might be a good way to work on those skills that I’ve been trying to hone for a while.

See, as someone who travels around and does training, I was able to appreciate not only the course itself, but how it was executed.  The two presenters had two different styles, but I appreciated both (note to self: learn to speak in bullet points). They made the opposite decisions of some that I’ve made over the years (they opted for a long morning, late lunch, and short afternoon–I usually do the opposite, usually because it’s requested, but I was reminded that doing a 60/40 split has its merits.)

I did share a sympathetic laugh when one of the presenters lost his train of thought in the middle of a talk–when you do the same content all the time, it happens.  You mentally check out while you’re talking and sometimes the autopilot fails.

The conference facility left a little bit to be desired.  One of the rooms was floor-to-ceiling windows.  The Venetian blinds didn’t cut a good portion of the light–a bad idea when the presenter is dependent on PowerPoint (or, in this case, Keynote–which looks neater than PowerPoint but has the misfortune of being a Mac-only program).

Among the other things that I learned inadvertently is that I still don’t like a good number of people out there in the universe.  It amazes me that some people can sit in a room with 200 other people and be completely unaware of their existence — or, more to the point, not actually care.

There are, for instance, the people who are so focused on the question they want to ask that they don’t notice that it’s already been asked and answered.  Those are annoying.

Then there were the people who didn’t turn off their cell phones.  And let them ring.  And ring.  And ring.  And didn’t actually seem to feel that acknowledging the disruption was necessary.  File those with people who can’t whisper.  And the lady who scraped her way along the metal blinds in one of the rooms…twice.  While the presenter was talking.

But mostly, the people I found annoying were the ones who honestly believe in the mantra about there being no such thing as a stupid question.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to give you a definitive answer: there is such a thing as a stupid question.  Let me demonstrate.

This morning, we had f8 lady.  I was attending the class on photographing sunrises, sunsets, and flowing water.  Nearly every time a different photo was shown, she would ask, “Did you shoot that at f8?”  For a while the instructor patiently indulged her, but, finally, displaying far more patience than I would have given the number of times the same question was asked, he replied, “I don’t honestly remember what I shot this at.”

“Well, what f-stop did you use?” she asked.
“I don’t really recall.”
“What was the aperture?”

Now … let me explain this in different terms so that you will understand exactly why this is a stupid question.  This is exactly the same thing as asking:

“Well, how many miles per hour were you going?”
“I don’t really recall.”
“What was your speed?”

The other reason why this was a particularly ill-advised question is that the instructor had just spent some time explaining that the technique he was describing could really be used at any aperture.  Granted, I didn’t go to the class where they discussed f-stops in detail, but it was pretty clear that he also didn’t quite get her fascination with f8.

There were also an inordinate number of people who seemed to completely miss the point of “principles that can be applied to any situation like the one I am describing.”  These tended to fall into one of two categories:

1. People who insisted on asking whether their situation–which was identical to the one being described–”counted” for the principles being described (the answer always being “yes”);
2. People who insisted on asking about a completely different situation and whether the principles being described would also apply to it.  While more understandable, what these did was slow the conversation down by causing the poor instructor to repeat, “We’ll get to that in a bit.”

Then, of course, there was the guy who had to argue with everything.

“I’m telling you to shoot in manual mode,” the instructor would say.
“But,” this guy would say, “Aperture Priority mode can do the same thing.”
“No it can’t,” the instructor would say, and explain why.
“But Aperture Priority Mode does that.”
“No, it doesn’t,” the instructor would say, and repeat.  Finally, someone else in the audience would try to explain it.  Eventually , the guy would get it.

And then ask the same damned question in the next class.

So, what I have gotten out of this weekend is as follows:

1. I learned that I shouldn’t be shooting with Auto White Balance.
2. I think I’m ready to try using manual mode on a regular basis.
3. I might be ready to try more portraiture, too.
4. And I learned that people really, really, really annoy the crap out of me.

And how was your weekend?