Digital Photography Classes?

I caught the photography bug again in 2004, after a nearly twenty year hiatus. I was faced with a rite of parenthood passage last spring, when our son left the town soccer club to play for a premier club. After a couple of years of amateur coaching, I happily hung up the clipboard, picked up a digital SLR camera, and left the training to the pros.

I figured that if I took the courses, got the certificates, and pretended to be a soccer coach, I could just as easily wield a big-lensed SLR, take some photography classes, and pretend to be a sports photographer.

Alas, I still haven't had the opportunity to take those photography classes ... I'm just humming a few bars and faking it ...

In a short time, I've come to learn that sports photography is one tough racket. (ouch)

But the money I blew on the Digital Rebel has already been outweighed by the money I've saved on film and processing. The high costs of development drove me away from the hobby two decades ago. But these days, I gladly throw out nine out of every ten shots.

And those I save? Only a handful get sent out to the digital photo print lab.

I've found that in order to effectively capture the moment, I need that eye for composition, the feel for lighting, a sense of anticipation, and a healthy dollop of good luck.

I don't shoot when something happens anymore.

Instead, I focus and hit the shutter a second before ... holding it down to catch a rapid-fire sequence of shots. Whap! Whap! Whap! The monopole (think of a tripod with just one leg) holds the camera steady as it fires away.

The close your eyes and wish technique yields a decent shot ... every so often.

Hey, I'm not fooling myself. I know that what I paid for my camera and used telephoto lens is just a tiny fraction of what it costs to do it right. (A professional sports photographer's zoom lens can easily top $10K.) What matters is that I'm having fun with it. And I'm learning a ton ... all without having taken a photography class (yet).

In the twenty years since I put down my old SLR, I've spent a good bit of time dinking around in Photoshop. I got away from capturing the moment and got into the time-sink of cleaning up existing images. But there's a big difference between getting the shot and the retouching or post-processing work. I need to clear my head, de-cloud my eye, and de-rustify my trigger finger.

So now I'm out there looking for lessons in digital photography ... specifically sports photography. While I've found some interesting websites, I still haven't turned up that magic link ...