She had been working in her previous company that manufactures crocodile-skin bags for 14 years. I had no doubt about it when she claimed that she was the right-hand woman of her boss. She was always enthusiastic about her work, no matter how small her jobs were, always positive, always had something good to say about everything, except the workload of teachers.
She left her previous employer because there was a conflict between her Buddhist or Vegetarian belief. She felt that she was ordering for lives to be taken whenever she had to make order for crocodile skin.
She decided that she wanted to try teaching, so she took up a 2-year contract as a Teacher-Aid.
After about 6 months into the job, she decided that teaching was not for her. She felt that teachers were not doing what they were supposed to do ie. teaching, but rather, everything else that had little to do with teaching.
She left recently to prepare for her business venture - a vegan handbag boutique.
For the person that she is, her attitude, her encouragement, she has left a deep impact on me.
She said that even at 40, she felt that we still have a long way to go, and we could start afresh in a career if we should choose to. I was intrigued that someone would think that way. Most people would think that we should settle in a job for the rest of our lives at late twenties! It jolted me: yeah, why should we feel trapped in a job that we don't like?
When I confided in her that I was not confident in taking pictures for friends or people who enquired about being photographed, she said the problem could be solved by going for a course.
I am so inspired by her optimistic personality that I have signed up for two courses: flash photography and basic photoshop course, simultaneously!
Despite having to travel all the way to town area, I realised that she was right: you won't feel tired if you are doing something that you like!
For so long, I thought tiredness has to do with age. But she's so darn right. After the lessons, I didn't feel tired. On the contrary, I felt refreshed and energised after the lessons. I feel empowered that I am learning new things, and things that I like!
Like I said in my previous post, I am sent for workshops by my school constantly, but 80 to 90 percent of the time, I feel that the workshops are not useful, and everybody in the workshops is always watching the clock! After the workshops, I always feel extremely tired.
But when you go for courses that you are interested in, oh my, what a difference it makes!
I am eager to try out what I have been taught. In fact, I have tried at least a function I asked the flash photography teacher about. And I am trying out the 'camera raw' function from the photoshop class. And I am enjoying every bit of it!
I even hope that I could learn more from each lesson, and look forward to every lesson!
Of course, there's no free lunch in Singapore. I pay for them out of my own pocket.
As I was trying out the features of camera raw, my all-time favourite quote came to my mind:
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
I had an ex-colleague who loved photography and tinkling with photo-editing software. After looking at his pictures from his cousin's wedding, edited and unedited, I realised that photography skill is not as important as photo-editing skills. An underexposed picture shot by the window in an HDB flat could look like it was shot in a studio environment after editing ie. bright, cropped, colour enhanced.
I have tried to play around with the features of Photoshop during my free time, but being the techno-idiot that I am, progress is painful and slow. I saved many youtube videos about Photoshop tutorials but have never gone back to them. I bought a Photoshop book but I hardly flip it, and I only pick up bits and pieces of the how-tos here and there.
I had gone for a business-sharing session and remembered what the photographer said,"I wanted to save on courses and learnt on my own, but I realised that courses make my learning curve so much gentler."
So I took the dive.
I tried the very fundamental techniques I was taught in my first photoshop lesson:
The raw picture
The edited picture
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