Sometimes I feel that I go on a bit too much about Toastmasters, like one of these born-again Christians who are always telling you how much better their life is since they met Jesus and all I can do is stop myself from rolling my eyes to heaven at such remarks yet here I am preaching the words of the Master of Toast (mmmmm, toast….)
On Friday I gave my eighth speech.
I’m beginning to get a bit self-concious about the number of speeches I’ve completed so far, I’ve done eight speeches in 5 months, that’s a lot, some people only do four or five in one year. It sounds really stupid but sometimes I worry that people will think I’m a bit of a swot for completing so many speeches!
The main reaction is “wow, you’ve done that many speeches”, maybe I should slow down a little but it’s so much fun and I’m keen to start on the projects in the advanced manuals, there one manual that is about reading out loud where you read poems, stories, a famous speech and even act out a play, it’s sounds like great fun, I can’t wait to start on that!
Friday evening was really good, it was at the Amsterdam Toastmasters at the Hilton, the place where I gave my first ever speech, so in a way it was a kind of a homecoming and I was curious to see how much I have progressed since then.
I gave a speech called “Taking Better Photos”, the project was designed to help me learn about working with visual aids and props, so naturally photography and showing off my photos seemed like a good idea.
As I’ve become happier with the progress I’ve made with my photos and their increasing quality, a seed of an idea has been slowing germinating, that maybe sometime in the future I could become a photography teacher. This was the first step.
There was no point talking about aperture and shutter speed, I needed to pick three quick tips that people without fancy cameras like mine could use. I settled on three simple ideas:
1. Stop and think about the picture you want before even taking out your camera.
2. Control your background, try to eliminating any distracting elements and if possible use a plain mono-colour background to highlight your subject.
3. The rule of thirds – composition, putting your photo together to give it strength and balance.
It went really well and I was very surprised by the reaction I got from my listeners, some of them used the words “inspirational” which was very interesting since I hadn’t intended it to be that way at all. One people even said I was overacting a little, which was great since I’ve never ever in my whole life been accused of that!
It was so good that I’ve been on a high ever since…
A photgraphy teacher?
To get paid for taking photos?
If only.
Not quite, it’s getting paid for encouraging other people to take photos but the bonus is that you get to show off all your photos and claim that they’re wonderful even if they’re not!