Marsha joined us on back-to-back photo adventures in Paris and Provence last year for a combination of street, cityscape, people and landscape photography. What impressed us most about Marsha was her desire to learn as much as possible. She was clearly comfortable with cityscape and landscape, and the use of a tripod and ND filters. Where she wasn’t so comfortable was with her street and people photography. In Paris we quickly discovered that Marsha never gives up. She works everything until she figures it out. She is a perfectionist with a eye for detail and composition. Perhaps this discipline comes from her career in accounting. If you study her showcased images below you will notice how her perseverance paid off. She actually excelled in the two categories she was least comfortable with. All in all, Marsha walked away with beautiful images in all the categories, many of which have won awards. One of the beautiful things about photography is the seemingly countless ways we can photograph. So it always impresses us when a photographer dives in, stretches their imagination, conquers their fears, and meets or exceeds their goals. Thank you Marsha! We look forward to seeing you in Croatia this summer.

Our photographer / guide Michael took our group for a night shoot to the Eiffel Tower – after all how can a photographer be in Paris and not photograph the iconic Paris landmark? An evening visit was a great opportunity to perfect our night shooting techniques and try some long exposure shots. Michael had a great pre-chosen spot for us where once the lights came on we could get beautiful shots of the bridge over the River Seine with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Before setting up our tripods at this location, we walked right up to the tower to get a close look at this amazing engineering structure. For my photograph, I chose a wide angle view from underneath the tower as I wanted to capture the incredible details. As it was getting close to 10 PM it was getting fairly dark outside and, given that we were standing underneath the tower, the lighting was difficult. I wanted to keep the image as clean as possible (i.e noise free) so I decided that an ISO of about 400 was as high as I wanted to go with my camera. I was forced to use a wide-open aperture of f4.0 in order to give me the minimum shutter speed that I was comfortable hand holding. The end result was that I sacrificed some depth of field for sharpness. In hindsight (if possible depending on how many people there were next to me), I should have set up the tripod which would have allowed me a greater depth of field and a lower ISO. Still I was happy with how the picture turned out. Given that part of the tower that I focussed on was far enough away and that I was using a wide-angle, the aperture used did not seem to have too much of a negative effect. In both the Paris and Provence workshops we had additional opportunities for night shooting which I really enjoyed. (more photos below)

ABOUT MARSHA

I am a very enthusiastic, amateur photographer who loves spending time with the camera wherever I am. My career was spent in accounting and auditing and after retiring a couple of years ago, I now have more time to devote to photography which has become my passion. My favorite types of photography are travel and nature although I am happy to photograph just about anything.

A CONVERSATION WITH MARSHA