Speedlite Photography Course

The advanced photography course covers more advanced areas in photography. These specialised areas are now available to purchase individually as short courses. These are more specialist subjects that are normally not covered by other courses.

The Speedlite photography course -gives you the skills to use your speedlite in a more creative way. It covers all of the flash and camera settings. As well as this you will gain an understanding the flash theory needed to balance exposures for all lighting conditions. Off the hot-shoe flash and the various methods of connection is also covered. The key factor to this course is to be able to use flash and your camera in manual modes.

The speedlite course will cover:

Anatomy of a flashgun or speedlite
Flash and a lens hood
Slow and rear curtain sync
Fill-in flash
Flash exposure compensation
Controlling background and subject brightness
Bounce flash
Flash hotspots
Flash pre-test
Lighting ratios
Fall off and inverse square law
Flash theory
Flash sync speed
Flash recycle time
How to use off-camera flash
Ways of firing your speedlite
Shutter speed and exposure
Controlling speedlite exposure in manual mode
Adjusting flash exposure
Subject and background brightness
Looking for unwanted shadows
Mixing daylight and flash
Flash coverage
Guide number
Painting with light
How to freeze movement using high-speed flash -Using colour gels

The still life photography course – will cover still life setups using natural or flash lighting. Key things such as equipment and using macro or extension tubes are shown. Creative set ups are shown and how they can be achieved by anyone without purchasing expensive equipment.

The still life photography course will cover:

Types, quality and direction of light
Natural light setups
Flash light setups
Exposure and camera settings
Backgrounds and setups
Extension tubes and macro
Depth of field and focus points
Focus stacking
Light panels
Creative still life shots
Using a Lensball
Scanography images
Making a Cyanotype print
Mixed media images

The street/ the urban environment photography course –is about capturing and getting images in a constantly changing environment. It is about finding shots in busy locations without compromising on quality. As well as this, the course covers exposure settings to make sure your images are sharp and correctly exposed.

The street and urban photography course will cover:

Finding your subjects
Composition rules and using them in a busy environment
Working with light
Focal lengths and what lenses to use
Focus points and drive modes
Different apertures for different subjects
Shutter speeds and ISO for handheld shots
Exposure compensation
Metre lock -Metering from a grey card and using manual mode

The landscape/ the rural environment photography course –goes through the principles of light, exploring different compositions, equipment, filters and metering. The course will cover different locations such as beaches, woodlands and conventional landscape settings. Understanding how to control light in all of these situations will enable you to produce fantastic rural photographs.

The landscape photography course will cover:

Light for landscapes
Exposure for landscapes
Metering for landscapes
Using mirror lockup
Using live view for exposure
Remote and cable release
Tripods
Understanding composition
Filters and how to use them
Exposing to the right and understanding a histogram
Creating a panoramic image
Exposure blending (HDR)
Creative movement landscapes or ICM photography

The Lowlight photography course -is designed to cover low light shooting and understanding the differences to brighter light conditions. As well as exposure, equipment and metering, this course covers painting with light and creative effects.

The lowlight photography course will cover:

Why is lowlight different?
Equipment needed
Camera modes and exposure settings
ISO for lowlight
Aperture for lowlight
Shutter speeds for lowlight
White balance
Focusing in lowlight
Exposure compensation
Live view
Mirror lock up
Bracketing exposures
Painting with light
Moving the camera during exposure
Zoom bursts
Lowlight and reflections -Handheld in lowlight

The natural light portrait course – Is for whether you are looking to become a professional photographer or simply looking to take stunning family portraits. During this course you will gather a greater understanding of how to control light and how to identify great locations to shoot. In addition to this, and equally important, you will learn how to direct your subjects for more flattering poses.

The natural light portrait course will cover:

Different camera modes for portraits
Understanding and controlling exposure
Understanding reflective and incident readings
Exposure compensation when in difficult lighting situations
Different light conditions and how to control exposure
Types, quality and direction of light
Thinking of light when posing your subject
Lights effect on tonality
Accessing light and finding the best light for your subject
Golden hour
Reflectors
Focusing for portraits
Composition and framing the subject
Focal length with portraits and avoiding distortion
Finding backgrounds and framing your subject
Posing your model

The studio photography course –will cover flash and camera exposure as well as equipment. We go through many different setups using a different number of lights. The main purpose of this course is to show how simple it is to set up a professional studio and get the results you want.

The studio photography course will cover:

Setting up a studio and what equipment is needed
Lighting ratios and their effect on the subject
Fall off and inverse square law and how light intensity works with exposure
High and Low-key setups for different moods
Camera settings for studio photography
How to use a light metre correctly
Understanding reflective and incident readings
Understanding a flash head
Flash attachments and their effects on an image
Broad lighting
Short lighting
How to pose a model
Rembrandt lighting
Split lighting

The Wedding photography Course –takes you through a professional photographer’s day, covering a pre-wedding meeting, contracts, timings, key photos of the day, working with natural and flash lighting. This course helps you understand the order and professional requirements needed to take on a commission.

The wedding photography course will cover:

Starting out and what is needed to become professional
Understanding your client
Before the wedding preparation and settings
Equipment checklist and making sure you have all the right kit for the job
On the day timings and order of key events
Camera settings under different lighting conditions
Contracts and Insurance
Checklist for images
Wedding tips for settings and making the job run smoother
Lighting and light theory to make the most out of the available light
Couple shots and tips on posing
Digital workflow and creating a system to stay organised
General principles of the day with dos and don’ts to help the day run smoothly
Other religion variations of a wedding day with key moments and the significance of them

Lightroom is not an intuitive software and for this reason this course will show how it differs from Photoshop and how it works. The Lightroom course covers all of the main features in to enable you to use the software fully. By the end of the course you will be able to navigate all of the functions and customise settings to suit your workflow. Below are some of the features covered on the course:

Within the Adobe Lightroom course you will learn:

Understanding the Adobe Lightroom interface
Develop module and using it to make changes to your images before exporting
Catalogue to collate your images and stay organised
Library module and viewing your images in different ways
Import/export and all the settings associated with this
Library filter rating to help you finetune your image selections
Collection stacks to help organise your images to tidy the view in the library area
Smart collections so that your collections adjust as you make changes
Collection sets and streamlining your images into groups for better reference
Map function to set up your GPS and act as a visual reference to the location where your images were taken
Lens correction to improve the lens errors created by every lens
Applying changes to other photos to save doing every edit again
Auto sync to apply changes to multiple images
Camera calibration to get match your images files from camera to computer
Slideshow to create slideshows for your clients
Print module for printing templates
Book module to create photobooks of your images
Syncing catalogues so your files match over all of your devices
Backing up your catalogue to protect from any failures or corruption
Tethered shooting and connecting your camera to your laptop

Photoshop is not an intuitive software for this reason, the Photoshop course starts from a basic level and by the end moves on to advanced functions such as layers, masks and batch processing. This course teaches about the functions and workflow to enable you to apply them to any of your photographic requirements. The course is not about learning a few gimmicky techniques it is about learning the fundamentals of Photoshop so you can use it properly and create beautiful images. Below are some of the features covered on the course:

Within the Adobe Photoshop course you will learn:

Colour management, to help with accurate editing
Soft-proofing to enable you to view the image in a print density
Customising pallets to have your layout best suit your needs
Brightness adjustments and how to not clip pixels and loose detail
Colour adjustments for correction or creativity
Black and white adjustments and the pros and cons between the different ways
History and all its advanced functions to allow you to recover your image at any point in your editing
Sharpening and the different methods of doing this and why it is important on every image
Filters to add creative effects to your images
Dodge & burn tools to transform your image brightness with complete control
Crop, resolution and resizing images without losing detail
Beauty editing and how to do this subtly and skilfully
RAW file control panel and the control it gives you after image capture
Text and all of the different methods you can use it for
Eraser tool and understanding the different types and when to use them
Layers an often-complicated subject which is explained fully over different sections
Adjustment layers and how to make the most of them and why they are beneficial over other editing methods
Masks and the clever adjustments you can make to an image which can be changed at any time to give you full control
Selection tools and when and where to use each one for accurate editing
Saving selections is useful for when you want to load them again without having to create another
Actions to allow you apply changes to many images saving you time
Creating a panoramic by stitching multiple images together
High pass filter to produce more dynamic images and bring out detail
Masking hair when using channels
Auto-alignment to transform images and edit them together
Auto blend layers to create complicated composites
Layer stacking to create complicated composites

Adobe post-production course is an extensive course that shows how to use both Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. The course starts from a basic level and by the end moves on to advanced functions such as layers, masks and batch processing. The Adobe post-production course teaches about the functions and workflow to enable you to apply them to any of your photographic requirements. The course is not about learning a few gimmicky techniques it is about learning the fundamentals of Lightroom and Photoshop so you can use it properly and edit your own images with confidence.

Course content:

Within the Adobe Photoshop section you will learn:

Colour management, to help with accurate editing
Soft-proofing to enable you to view the image in a print density
Customising pallets to have your layout best suit your needs
Brightness adjustments and how to not clip pixels and loose detail
Colour adjustments for correction or creativity
Black and white adjustments and the pros and cons between the different ways
History and all its advanced functions to allow you to recover your image at any point in your editing
Sharpening and the different methods of doing this and why it is important on every image
Filters to add creative effects to your images
Dodge & burn tools to transform your image brightness with complete control
Crop, resolution and resizing images without losing detail
Beauty editing and how to do this subtly and skilfully
RAW file control panel and the control it gives you after image capture
Text and all of the different methods you can use it for
Eraser tool and understanding the different types and when to use them
Layers an often-complicated subject which is explained fully over different sections
Adjustment layers and how to make the most of them and why they are beneficial over other editing methods
Masks and the clever adjustments you can make to an image which can be changed at any time to give you full control
Selection tools and when and where to use each one for accurate editing
Saving selections is useful for when you want to load them again without having to create another
Actions to allow you apply changes to many images saving you time
Creating a panoramic by stitching multiple images together
High pass filter to produce more dynamic images and bring out detail
Masking hair when using channels
Auto-alignment to transform images and edit them together
Auto blend layers to create complicated composites
Layer stacking to create complicated composites

Within the Adobe Lightroom section you will learn:

Understanding the Adobe Lightroom interface
Develop module and using it to make changes to your images before exporting
Catalogue to collate your images and stay organised
Library module and viewing your images in different ways
Import/export and all the settings associated with this
Library filter rating to help you finetune your image selections
Collection stacks to help organise your images to tidy the view in the library area
Smart collections so that your collections adjust as you make changes
Collection sets and streamlining your images into groups for better reference
Map function to set up your GPS and act as a visual reference to the location where your images were taken
Lens correction to improve the lens errors created by every lens
Applying changes to other photos to save doing every edit again
Auto sync to apply changes to multiple images
Camera calibration to get match your images files from camera to computer
Slideshow to create slideshows for your clients
Print module for printing templates
Book module to create photobooks of your images
Syncing catalogues so your files match over all of your devices
Backing up your catalogue to protect from any failures or corruption
Tethered shooting and connecting your camera to your laptop

The Advanced Photography course covers more advanced areas in photography. These are more specialist subjects that are normally not covered by other courses. We have placed all of these in one course to help photographers take their skills to a more advanced, professional level. Through a number of tailored exercises and tuition, you will explore advanced concepts of photography and develop a better understanding of professional areas.

If you are looking to become a professional photographer then our advanced photography course is the perfect starting point. Over the duration of the course you will learn about the technical and creative aspects of advanced photography.

Becoming a professional photographer is a highly rewarding career and yet achieving this aim isn’t easy. Using our experience and industry know-how we can help you to achieve your dreams and create a flourishing business. Our advanced course means you can learn in all of the following areas: wedding, portrait, flash, landscape, studio, still life, urban or lowlight.

The course has the following modules:

The Wedding photography module–takes you through a professional photographer’s day, covering a pre-wedding meeting, contracts, timings, key photos of the day, working with natural and flash lighting. This module helps you understand the order and professional requirements needed to take on a commission.

The studio photography module – will cover flash and camera exposure as well as equipment. We go through many different setups using a different number of lights. The main purpose of this module is to show how simple it is to set up a professional studio and get the results you want.

The natural light portrait module – Is for whether you are looking to become a professional photographer or simply looking to take stunning family portraits. During this module you will gather a greater understanding of how to control light and how to identify great locations to shoot. In addition to this, and equally important, you will learn how to direct your subjects for more flattering poses.

The Speedlite photography module - gives you the skills to use your speedlite in a more creative way. It covers all of the flash and camera settings. As well as this you will gain an understanding the flash theory needed to balance exposures for all lighting conditions. Off the hot-shoe flash and the various methods of connection is also covered. The key factor to this module is to be able to use flash and your camera in manual modes.

The Lowlight photography module - is designed to cover low light shooting and understanding the differences to brighter light conditions. As well as exposure, equipment and metering, this module covers painting with light and creative effects.

The landscape/ the rural environment photography module – goes through the principles of light, exploring different compositions, equipment, filters and metering. The module will cover different locations such as beaches, woodlands and conventional landscape settings. Understanding how to control light in all of these situations will enable you to produce fantastic rural photographs.

The street/ the urban environment photography module – is about capturing and getting images in a constantly changing environment. It is about finding shots in busy locations without compromising on quality. As well as this, the module covers exposure settings to make sure your images are sharp and correctly exposed.

The still life photography module – is an extra module where we have covered still life setups using natural or flash lighting. Key things such as equipment and using macro or extension tubes are shown. Creative set ups are shown and how they can be achieved by anyone without purchasing expensive equipment.

Although you may feel you need to buy the equipment used on the course, you do not have to have to. However, by having the equipment you would benefit by being able to do the different techniques yourself and put into practice everything you have learnt. You can learn all of the principles of each topic from the course materials without making expensive purchases.

Intermediate Digital Photography course offers the next level in your photography. Through a number of tailored exercises and tuition, you will explore key concepts of photography and develop a better understanding of how you can manually adjust the settings so that you can always frame and capture the image you are looking for regardless of the shooting conditions.

So, get off Auto and start crafting your photographs! - learn to take beautiful photographs using ISO, Shutter and Aperture. This online photography course is designed to get you feeling confident using your camera, and ready to take your photos to the next level.

You will learn more about your own camera pick up new skills and develop existing areas such as:

ISO settings to give you the skills for adjusting the exposure triangle to get the creative results you want
File types, quality settings and using RAW to decide what is best for your requirements
Editing RAW files to get the best end result from your image
Screen colour management to enable you to edit and print more accurately
White Balance and how to control colour temperature to get the best colours for your images
Colour theory is covered to understand how they can work together to enhance the subject
How to control exposure will be covered by using the exposure compensation dial, this means you can record images with the right brightness of the scene or use it to get creative
All of the different metering methods and gaining control of the exposure triangle
Adjusting aperture and controlling depth of field
Adjusting shutter speed and how it effects movement
Understanding exposure stops and working more quickly in manual mode to gain full control of your camera
Photography is ‘painting with light’, so understanding the principles of light and using it to your advantage will help improve your images. This course will cover the types of light and working with it
The course also covers lens types and their different uses as well as focus and lens distortion
Composition rules and how to frame your subject more creatively to improve your images from a basic snapshot

This course is designed to enable you to gain full control over your camera.

For this course your camera must have manual settings such as those found on a mirrorless or SLR. This is so you to get the most out of all the course material. This is an ideal progression course from the Beginners Digital Photography or for anyone who owns an SLR camera.

The basic Digital Photography course is an ideal place to start if you are new to digital photography and want to get the most from your camera. This digital photography course is very practical; you will learn about all of the essential controls, modes and menu system to help you take great images. As well as camera settings, framing and light are also covered to enable you to produce creative images whatever the subject. The course is delivered with videos, handouts and practical exercises. Tutor support is available as well if needed.

If you are new to digital photography then our beginner’s course is the perfect place to start. The beginner's course starts by simplifying the technical terms you may have heard of before going on to look at the more creative side of using your camera so you can start taking some wonderful images. There are five modules on our beginner’s programme – Module 1 starts by looking at composition and getting you to think more creatively when framing your images.

What is covered in the course:

Resolution settings and file types- making sure you are using the best quality settings
Composition rules and how to frame your subject more creatively to improve your images from a basic snapshot
Flash settings and how to control artificial light for when needed
Camera modes such as portrait, landscape and night which will allow you to step out of fully auto
Colour settings will also be covered to be able to adjust colours, contrast, saturation and sharpness
Focus is extremely important, so focus settings and the key factors for getting sharp images is also covered
Zoom types and how to prevent unflattering distortion on a subject
White Balance and how to control colour temperature to get the best colours for your images
How to control exposure will be covered by using the exposure compensation dial, this means you can record images with the right brightness of the scene or use it to get creative
Preventing corrupt images and card errors will also be covered with formatting your memory card
When you start with digital photography one of the hardest things is getting to grips with all the menus. The course will take you through how to navigate the menu system and also understanding the display and function buttons as well as customising the camera settings to suit your needs
Photography is ‘painting with light’, so understanding the basics of light and using it to your advantage will help improve your images. This course will cover the types of light and working with it

The Basic Digital Photography course covers everything you need to know to gain more confidence and step out of fully auto and use your camera more creatively. Any camera is suitable for this course, although a phone camera is not recommended because it will not have most of the settings covered.

Speedlite Photography Course

Course content:

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