Creative Photography 101 Semester: Shooting & Digital Darkroom Editing

This is an introductory Semester Length learning class for students interested in learning about Photography, how to use their Cameras, how to take great photographs and how to edit using modern, Digital Darkroom software Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom.  This semester length class, combines my Foundations 1 and 2 courses. Students should have a camera they can use, it can be a smart phone camera, iphones,  point & shoot, or a DSLR camera. It doesn't matter what type of camera your student has, thought I will be demonstrating with a DSLR for photographic concepts with the Exposure Triangle. 

Students will learn shooting techniques on Tuesdays, go out and take photographs and then on Thursdays, come back and edit their images. 

Class 1: Shooting Techniques Class Topic: Introduction to cameras, DSLRs, smart phone camera & more. Learn about your camera parts, Lens etc - intro to the exposure triangle   
Shooting subjects photo-shoot homework : Something around your house

Class 2:  Live Interactive Demo: Intro to Adobe Lightroom Basics for the digital photographer- getting your photographs from the camera into the computer, importing images, cataloging and sorting photographs, meta data and more. Sorting and rating your images 
Shooting subjects photo-shoot homework : Food or Plant Photographs

Class 3: Shooting Techniques:  Visual Composition for taking better photographs, Camera settings ISO, aperture, Shutter, White balance and more  - basic natural light shooting techniques - 

Class 4: Live Interactive Demo: Lightroom Basics II, controlling exposure and shadows, white balance adjustments, changing your composition via cropping, exporting finished images. Workflow between Lightroom and Photoshop. Basics of Photoshop Intro 1

Class 5:  Shooting Technique Class Topics: Aperture, Bokeh and Depth of Field. 
Shooting subjects photo-shoot homework : Animals or Portraits

Class 6: Live Interactive Demo: Lightroom Batch Editing, sharpening, clarity, blurring. Basics of Photoshop Intro 2: Using Photoshop Layers and Adjustments. Color adjustments and controlling color adjustment layers inside of Photoshop.   Emphasis is on workflow between Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Lightroom.

Class 7: Shooting Technique Class Topics: Shutter Speed. Super slow shutters, and super fast shutter speed effects on image making . 
Shooting subjects photo-shoot homework : Action Sports or Dance 

Class 8: Live Interactive Demo using Photoshop Painting Techniques  

Class 9: Shooting Technique Class Topics: Nature Landscapes, Leaves or Florals , best settings and best lenses for nature, natural lighting basic concepts

Class 10: Live Interactive Demo: Lightroom Basic workflow with Photoshop in depth intermediate tools for moving (move tools) and basic selections 

Class 11: Shooting Technique Class Topics: Portraits or Pets (Animals)  best settings and best lenses for nature, natural lighting basic concepts

Class 12: Live Interactive Demo: Photoshop in depth, masking specifics, lasso, magnetic lasso, basic cut outs and intro to masking

Class 13: Shooting Technique Class Topics:  Architecture and scenes: Places to put your Subjects

Class 14: Live Interactive Demo: Photoshop in depth demo on masking with the pen tool. Emphasis is on Photoshop skill development, where Students will be able to cut out their photographic subjects and place them into a new scene

Class 15: Shooting Technique Class Topics: Portraits, People, place and locations to put your subjects. Matching lighting conditions for realistic "photo shopping"

Class 16: Live Interactive Demo: Photoshop demo on warping, scaling and controlling your images with special project on creating art similar to Dali style with photographic elements Students can focus on putting their final image together 

Please Note: *These Photography class are part of my semester sequence, Photography Education Series and are adapted from my high school and college curriculum for teaching photography in depth.