The Art of Creativity: Photography class with Course Horse

Appreciating a photograph and creating your own little piece of art are two completely different things. While I love a creative, colorful photo as much as the next girl, making my own photographs shine beyond Instagram has been something I’ve always wanted to work on. When the opportunity through CourseHorse, a website where you can find and enroll in local courses, suddenly presented itself to me, I seized the chance to polish my photography skills. The class I took was “Composition in the Field: Grand Central Station”, taught by the talented photographer and very patient instructor, Marla Mossman from the Digital Photo Academy.

We spent the afternoon with different photo challenges after on the spot instruction. From documenting the iconic exterior of Grand Central to close up photographs of food in the Market inside Grand Central, I became much more intimate in those three hours with my Canon Powershot than I have been in the three years I’ve owned it. While my point and shoot was sufficient for use, to get the most out of the class I would recommend bringing your DSLR camera and Marla will teach you how to own that thing.

All of the photos included in this post were taken during the composition class and have not been altered by any photo editing programs, so you can experience the real deal of what I was able to accomplish with Marla’s instruction.

I started getting pretty creative and a little creepy when I crouched down to shoot this photo in between two columns looking over the bustling Main Terminal in Grand Central.

After learning that I can actually control the ISO settings (which control how sensitive the camera will be to light) on my camera, a setting that was definitely not right for the lighting ended up creating a very cool silhouette effect.

The best part of the class was the reminder of the level of creativity trapped inside each one of us. Simply setting aside the time to focus on the intricate, amazing little details within Grand Central and the added bonus of having the instruction of how to best capture them with my camera made the experience transcend beyond being just educational. If you want to learn more about your digital camera, how to improve your photography, or want to exercise your creative side check out Marla’s Composition in the Field Course. Course Horse also offers hundreds of other course options if photography is not your thing.