Learn Digital Photography

This is a six week, 2 1/2 hour per week of classroom instruction and a location shoot. The course is designed for the beginner to novice photographer with a DSLR camera. The course is not intended for film photographers, although much of the photographic technique is the same, a great deal of the content will only apply to digital.

There are only three things that control exposure, the ISO speed of your film or camera, the Aperture (the size of the lens opening), and the shutter speed (how long the lens is open). This class will show you how, using “Liquid Light” , these three things interact to give control of the exposure and therefore the final image’s impact.

Once you understand exposure you can use it to create many photographic effects, including motion blur, freezing the subject, blurred backgrounds, and depth of field. You will learn that the camera is your enemy when shooting on “Program or Auto” and that you must take control away from the camera and turn it over to your creative vision. You will learn how to use your digital camera’s tools, such as the ”exposure meter” and “histogram” to give you the control over exposure needed for “fantastic” (not just properly) exposed photos.

You will learn to use composition techniques such as: the Rule of Thirds, Leading Lines, S curves, C curves, Light, and many others to add interest to your images. Today’s digital camera can do an excellent job of getting a good exposure, but creating the image is entirely up to the photographer.

You will learn about equipment, including lens, flash, tripods, cases, and many of the specialty gadgets that are available.

Once you have taken the image you must process it before it can reach the full potential, we will cover how to download, organize and backup your image library. We will learn about the benefits of shooting RAW files verses JPEG or TIF and how to do basic editing using Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) or Adobe Lightroom.

There will be homework assignments, and in class reviews by both the instructor and the other class participants.

Just over halfway through the class we will do an in field photo shoot, to apply what you have learned about capturing the image and then use these images to complete the image processing part of the class.