Emma Williams said she knew she was applying what she’d learned in her Shutterbugs II class at Sampson Community College when her daughter commented on her photographs.
“She said, ‘Ma you are a photographer now … your pictures look really good. You aren’t like the paparazzi any more.’ I knew right then I had arrived, when she started noticing what I was doing.”
But in truth, Williams had already begun to think of herself as a photography, realizing as she pointed her camera at one subject and then another that she was looking at the world around her through a different eye, exactly what instructor Gloria Edwards wants for her students.
“I look at the picture or what I am taking in a more objective way. I’m not just snapping and going. I’m looking at what makes a subject click for me before I ever take it,” Williams said.
And that’s what she has taken from her second level class, a thought echoed by many of those in the second level class.
“I’m still learning how to use my camera,” noted student Amelia Surratt, “and I’m having a great time doing it.”
Surratt pointed to a recent trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and the way she approached taking photographs while there. “You really do look at things differently.”
Edwards has tried to instill that in her students, whether in the first level Digital Do’s and Don’ts class or her two higher level courses of Shutterbugs II and III.
“I want them to enjoy what they are doing and to really look around them and see the beauty. Once they get that, I think they are hooked.”
Denise McLamb said that was certainly the case. “I love taking pictures now; and I love looking for pictures in the unusual. There’s nothing better than stopping, getting still and looking around me. Sometime I’m learning to refocus or to refresh, or both. I’m eager to learn more.
McLamb and others will have that chance as Edwards and SCC team to offer all three classes again starting the last week of February.
To register, call the Continuing Education Department at SCC, 910-592-8081.