Material Girl: Out of her depth of field at Bright Festival of Photography 2019

Definitely not in the plain-talking sense, but when I'm armed with a camera.

I've taken gazillions of photographs since I got my very first point and shoot camera for Christmas, aged 11, in the summer of 1982.

The slimline automatic model had a fold-out, hard cover case and a stretchy, metal wrist strap that annoyingly pinched the fine, sun-bleached hairs on my arms.

I've captured scores of social gatherings, school milestones and family holidays head-on, on film.

I've had dozens of rolls of Kodak film processed, hundreds of pictures printed and all captioned in bulky albums off the shelves from Kmart Albury.

When I got my first serious camera - a Canon SLR - I continued to shoot in automatic mode.

The same applied when I upgraded to a Nikon a decade ago.

I appreciated the clarity of the photographs but not the fancy SLR dials.

Like all manuals, they make for dull reading. I can't even get through the pile of fiction on my bedside table!

Now I take most of my photos on an iPhone for easy sharing to social media platforms.

But while the phone photos are fine enough for a Facebook album, they rarely measure up when they're enlarged and printed out.

Fronting up to the Bright Festival of Photography on Saturday, I knew I'd be well out of my depth of field, so to speak. Boom boom!

I also had an inkling my decade-old Nikon would be a relic amid the photography fraternity.

My festival sidekick, however, assured me her Canon was even more ancient than my model.

Her advice: We'd fake it until we could make it.

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Forty minutes into our first Food Styling For Beginners workshop, her Canon gave up the ghost.

"No way! Are you faking it?! Seriously!" I say, as she shows me her camera's blank monitor screen.

Even the French food stylist instructor couldn't jump-start it. It was kaput, or kapout (in French).

While I saw out the last hour of the first food photography workshop (photograph food at 45 degrees - angle not temperature; use cheap foam reflectors to control brightness; and light up a dark table setting with a torch before snapping the still life on a timer setting), she secured a fancy loaner Nikon from the organisers for the rest of the weekend-long festival.

Then I officially had the oldest camera.

We were surrounded by retirees sporting the Winnebagos of the camera world; lenses, tripods and equipment. They had touchscreen monitors and they were controlling them with the fearlessness and mastery of toddlers on iPads.

Undeterred, we pushed onwards and upwards to the Mount Hotham Sunset workshop.

Frustratingly, the weather was overcast and the sun had not shown up for a split second on Saturday.

We scaled the mountain in a mini bus at 60kmh to within three kilometres of the village ie. three kilometres from the nearest hotel serving mulled wine.

At that altitude, it was 2 degrees but felt like roughly minus 20 without any ski gloves or a beanie.

But every cloud has a silver lining.

At the relatively warmer climes a little way back down the mountain, the light show was more promising.

I finally succumbed to switching the camera to manual mode.

Suddenly I was aflutter about shutter speeds and pulling out all stops on F, well, Stops.

After almost four decades of taking photographs, I was starting to see the light.

Now I'm up to Page 41 of Nikon Digital Camera D3100 User's Manual.

I'm hoping for a happy ending!