These emails come with the intent of helping you be a better photographer.

But if you're tired of hearing from me, unsubscribe.

And if you want more photography stuff to read, there's a place on the interwebs where past emails I wrote are stored.

You'll find 'em in the "Newsletter Hub."

Remember, I'd like to know what you want to know about photography.

So, if you have any questions, email me at sam@samdamico.com. 

And for what it's worth, when you send me an email unless someone's lookin' over my shoulder, I'm the only one who sees it.

It’s tempting to do more.
 

But we shouldn’t do more than we need to do.
 

It’s good to do more in terms of camera operation, especially if we’re working in automatic exposure mode.

Of course, what I mean by doing more is working in manual exposure mode.

When it comes to creating pictures that communicate what we want, as a simplified comparison, working in automatic exposure mode requires minimal involvement in creating the photograph, while working in manual exposure mode requires all of our involvement.
 

And when it comes to creating interesting work, we need to be as involved as possible

But even when working in manual exposure mode, we only need to do what needs to be done to get the picture we want.

Doing more than we need to do is doing extra, and doing extra is unreasonable.

Being unreasonable in our studies and practice is ineffective and inefficient.

It distracts us from understanding photography.

For example working in automatic exposure mode and expecting the camera to create a picture we want is unreasonable because the camera doesn’t know what we want and the camera bases it’s composition on the algorithms that are dumped into it; this has nothing to do with us creating the photograph beyond framing and content and pushing the shutter release to make the exposure when we think is appropriate, the rest of the picture’s composition is a crapshoot; this is an unreasonable way to create a photograph and does not provide any opportunity to learn about photography beyond going into the metadata and looking at it.

But even looking at the metadata, we don’t understand what we’re looking at because we don’t understand the meaning and relationship between aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and the outcome in terms of composition, considering the light we’re working with.

In other words, we don’t have the foundational understanding we need to learn about photography.

And there’s only one thing to know and three things we need to understand to create a compelling photograph.

What we need to know is what our intent of communication is.

Additionally, we need to understand photography to get our intended communication across in a photograph.

To understand photography, we need to understand the interplay of camera operation, composition, and light.

We should remember these things to have valuable and helpful studies and practice.
 

Please keep it simple, thoughtful, intentional, and nothing extra.

We don’t need to do any more than necessary to get the photograph that communicates what we want it to communicate, and we certainly shouldn’t be doing any less; this is one of the big lessons of the Introduction to Photography class.

The Introduction To Photography classes are starting soon.
 

If the schedules don’t work for you, we could arrange a series of private lessonscovering the same material.

The Photography Basics (Introduction To Photography) group classes starts soon or you can learn the same stuff as a series of Private Lessons.
  
More ways to study and practice photography with me are below.

Call me at (202) 531-2344 if you need help determining the best course for you.

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A note about group class sizes: Did you know that some places that teach photography have up to 25 students in each class? 

Bigger ain't always better.

That's why I limit my group classes to no more than five participants because smaller classes make for better, more effective, and more efficient learning experiences.

But smaller classes also mean spots fill up quicker, so sign up soon. 

I'll help you be a better photographer—study and practice photography with me. 

Currently scheduled classes are below.

And what if the timing doesn't work for you in any of my scheduled group classes? Private in-person lessons suited to your schedule are always an option.