Advanced Grad Customer Stories – Hope de la Rosa

 

Imagine having the skills to shoot fast and confidently in any light but especially in really challenging light, and take a beautiful image at the same time, every time.

Hope de la Rosa is an Advanced Grad who wanted to learn not only those skills… but she wanted to do it with her busy toddler as her subject. Toddlers are the trickiest subject of all, let’s be real, but having the skills to nail it are not out of reach. And Hope is proof of that!

All it takes is the skills to read light so you can choose your settings more instinctively; a deeper understanding of exposure and histograms; an ability to find and harness more creative light; and lastly, an artist’s eye for more compelling compositions. And as it happens, we teach all that and more in the Advanced Course.

 

Meet Hope!

So today I’d love for you to meet Hope, a freelance tv commercial producer from Denver, Colorado where she lives with her husband, her two boys aged 2.5 years and 3 months, and a 13yo furbaby. Hope loves Click Love Grow… she did our Enthusiast Course back in January, and she fell in love with our positive and supportive community and flexible lessons. So when she was ready to move beyond the basics and really elevate her skills in all those areas, it was a no brainer to join our Advanced Course because our comprehensive modules ticked all her boxes…

Toddler Life

After the Enthusiast Course I knew how to control my camera to take a perfectly balanced photo. I also had an understanding of the fundamentals of light and composition,  but eventually I came to have visions for my photos that were more artistic, more dynamic, and I wanted to elevate all my skills.

I’m a mom of a 2 year old boy, and toddler life doesn’t always happen in perfect lighting conditions!

So I wanted to learn how to shoot confidently in difficult lighting situations. He’s also really busy, which means things happens fast and without warning. So I needed to get faster with my settings, and part of that meant  learning how to read the light.

I was also overwhelmed with Lightroom, and although I was very familiar with Photoshop, it felt too clunky for photo editing for the look I wanted to achieve. I would also edit just one image for hours… I had serious issues with skin tones and would tweak until the wee hours of the morning! So I wanted to get faster at editing and more confident with it.

Lastly I also wanted to find my own visual style, or at least get closer to finding it.

#photographygoals

So I had a lot of goals! In a nutshell I wanted the ability to capture my son faster, more confidently, in challenging light and still produce creative, beautifully dynamic images, in a style I could call my own… and edit them quickly. That’s all!

So it just made sense to keep going with my CLG education and join the Advanced Course because they covered all of the above and more. And it didn’t let me down.

 

The Game Changer

The metering lesson was a game changer for me, it made me realized how chained I was to my EV meter always being at 0.  Breaking away from this habit was definitely an “aha” moment.

I learned how to read a histogram which was amazing because it taught me how far I could push my images without losing too much detail. I now use it constantly to check my images in camera and this has helped me tremendously, as it’s a much more reliable method of determining if I nailed exposure than just looking at the screen which can be affected by the ambient light.

The lessons on tone and key gave me a new understanding of light and exposure so that I could read the light and expose for more dynamic or dramatic imagery.

All of these lessons have helped me with reaching my goal of being faster with my settings so I can keep up with my little boy!

Learning how to look critically at images was invaluable in helping me unpack all the elements of a photo so that I knew what I needed to do to recreate a photo vision. It helped me understand why certain things appeal to me and why they don’t.

The lesson on editing mistakes made me realize how heavy handed I was, and I also gained a lot from seeing how other students edit.  These lessons set me on the path to finding my own personal style.

 

Flexible Learning

I have taken every course and workshop I could, and I decided to take the Advanced Course even though I was due with my second child right in the middle of it. But I’d already done their Enthusiast Course so I already knew it was flexible.  I had my baby and barely skipped a beat with my photography (thank goodness because the photos I took at the hospital while healing from my C-section were amazing!).

The Click Love Grow Difference

What’s not to love!  I fell in love with Click Love Grow the moment I joined their free Loving Photography Facebook group.

I’m a member of a few photo groups and none are as open, friendly and kind as the CLG groups. 

The course lessons, community and the friendships I’ve gained through CLG has reignited my passion for photography.  For so long I was just wandering around this journey, and I’ve had many chances to learn how to use manual mode, but nothing I found ever pushed me to really want to learn. I would put my camera down and give up until I found the urge to learn again.  This cycle continued for over 10 years until last January when I decided to take the Enthusiast Course and since then I’ve grown SO MUCH!

I thought that harsh criticism was the best way to learn, but I quickly found out that for me a supportive and encouraging environment was much more effective.

I’m now creating images I always thought were beyond my reach.

I’m proud to admit that I’m addicted to Click Love Grow!

Before & After

A before and after series of photos is such a powerfully visual way to highlight the difference you can make to your photos in a really short space of time when you take the Advanced Course. So please enjoy Hope’s beautiful before and after set! Same subjects, same camera – the only difference is one was taken before she took the Advanced Course, and the other two images were taken after she graduated in May this year.

 

A big thank you to Hope for your wonderful words and beautiful images! If you want to see more of Hope’s photography check her out on Instagram.

 

If you’re already shooting in manual mode, on our Advanced Photography Course you will learn to shoot with confidence in any scenario, and push yourself creatively to find and develop your style through intensive 1:1 critique on your work.  Our next course is starting soon… join our wait list to get an email when we go on sale!