Toni Maisano

Prizewinning Photography is now over .  In some ways this week went by so fast, and in others it seems like I’ve been here for a long time, just because of the sheer amount of information that we’ve covered in five days.  But yes, I am sad that it’s over, and now I wish that there had been some way for me to stay and go to Prizewinning Photography 2 next week.  Oh well.  I’m already making plans to try and go to it in February next year, so we’ll see what happens.

And today, being the last day and all, I actually tried to get in some pictures and succeeded.

[One of my lovely roomates, Mercy, and I]

[don't you love self-portraits?]

[Not a self-portrait]

[With Christina, one of the fabulous instructors]

[Me with Rowan Gillson, the director of IPS.  I suddenly look like a midget.]

[After our final exam, a bunch of us walked down to a coffee shop in town.  But alas, this depressing sign hung on the door.]

[Late at night after the ending stuff, slideshow, etc, we all ran around town again shooting pictures.]

And thus we have reached the end of Toni’s adventures at the Institute for Photographic Studies.

The end.

Whew!  I can’t believe that IPS is almost over…the week has gone by a lot faster than I thought it would.  I was a little nervous coming all by myself at first, but now that we’re down to our last day I’m sorry that it’s over .

Anyways..today we had a lovely, long morning in Garden of the Gods.  The first hour or so we all got to watch two actual photoshoots done by the instructors which was very interesting and very helpful to me at least.  We watched how they interacted and posed people and were able to ask questions.  Good stuff.  Then we got our assignments for the day.  We had to shoot…

-One straight on portrait

-Two three-quarter portraits, one with broad lighting and the other with short lighting

-One full length portrait

-One head and shoulders portrait

So we all divided up into groups and started shooting.  We tried to stay in groups of at least three so we could have 1 model, 1 photographer, and 1 person to hold the reflector.  Oh, speaking of which…I found my latest item I definitely need .  The reflector was amazing, I couldn’t believe what a difference it made.  Soooo…if someone feels like randomly buying me one, that would be totally cool.  Really.

Okay, just kidding.  I’ll buy one myself at some point.

(Oh yes, Pikes Peak had snow on it in the morning too…)

After our assignments were done, we all jumped back in the bus and headed back for a while.  And then we got the rest of the afternoon off and all went to a beautiful park and just hung out.  Fun stuff.

(Look!  It’s me!  Problem with taking lots of pictures is that you’re never in any.)

Well, due to the crazy early morning hours we were up at, I’m just going to post a bunch of pictures without much commentary, and you can imagine all the wonderful stories behind these pictures .