I have to admit that SETC was very intimidating. I am no less intimidated by it now as I was before I went. Being around so many professionals and really good amateurs made me see that it doesn’t hurt to have higher expectations for myself. I learned a lot in the workshops that I went to. Some things were things I could apply immediately, such as some makeup techniques, while other things were interesting enough but I will not be able to use them at this point in time. One workshop, “Lighting for the Camera,” I went to because I liked the name of it. I realized that it was very different from what I thought the subject matter was going to be. I hadn’t given much thought to the name. At first I thought since it was in a totally different area of the theater that I hadn’t been going to workshops for, that I would get nothing out of it. But actually in that workshop I learned more than all of my other workshops put together. Just a few things I had never known: that daylight is the coolest light, how to light a person’s face effectively, Fuji film is good for photographing greens while Kodak is good for photographing reds, and the importance of white balancing a camera. I never would have dreamed that my “oops” workshop would be the one that I would enjoy the most.

AG