Elstree Film School - The Art of Photography

Our Photography training course is a fantastic and intensive learning experience designed to take you directly into the heart of the world of Photography quickly, effortlessly and in the shortest period of time. Taught by an expert and well regarded professional Photographer with over 20 years experience in the field of fashion, wedding, portrait and commercial Photography, our Photography training course offers a concise, detailed and practical guide to mastering the skills required.

All of the fundamental aspects of Photography are covered in depth, as well as many special technical and compositional techniques most often acquired through many years of experience and innovation. Under the guidance of our professional photographer you will come to terms with many of the photographic fundamentals including: determining exposure, controlling the colour cast, focal length, lens aperture and how best to frame your image in a variety of situations. The sole aim of our Photography training course is to quickly assist you in getting the most out of the current technology available and to ensure you are able to take decent photos without frustration. At the conclusion of the course you will find yourself well on the way to creating superb photographs, quickly and confidently.

Duration: 1 day.

Location: Elstree Film School, 21st Century New Media Ltd, Elstree Film Studios, Shenley Road, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, WD6 1JG. [Click here for a map]

Times: 10.00am to 4.30pm. For security reasons, further details are only provided upon booking.

Software Versions: All of our Adobe courses include lessons generic to both CS3 and CS4 versions of the Adobe suite: whichever version you use is covered in our courses. In addition, we also now preview the functionality of the new Adobe CS5 software. Our Apple training courses utilise the latest versions of Final Cut Studio HD (also known of as version 3 or FCS 2009).

Equipment: Our fully featured training room includes six top-of-the-range iMac computers configured to work in both Macintosh (OSX) and PC (Windows) modes, ensuring you the maximum familiarity with your chosen operating system.

Accommodation: Details of local accomodation can be found here.

Further assistance: Our FAQ help page contains the answers to many popular questions. Alternatively please call 0844 844 2428 to arrange to speak to our training manager.

COURSE CONTENT

A very brief history of Photography

• Development of chemical photography
• The evolution of digital photography

Your Camera

• Shooting with your camera straight out the box
• Reading the manual
• Resetting defaults
• Auto white balance/exposure compensation
• Basic composition
• Landscape vs Portrait

Exposure

• Determining exposure
• Optimimum exposure vs underexposure or overexposure
• How to use exposure compensation
• When to change and adopt different ISO settings
• Metering techiques: spot, centre-weighted and multi-zone metering
• Monitoring the histogram
• Backlighting
• Program/shutter priority/aperture priority

White Balance

• How and why we can change the white balance
• Controlling the colour cast
• Adapting to colour temperature
• Automatic vs manual

How to choose the best camera settings for your photos

• Finding your way around
• Controlling your camera
• Mastering the menus
• Altering settings
• Image composition

Knowing your lens

• Lens types
• How does a lens affect your image?
• Focal length and image size
• Focal length angle of view
• wide-angle
• Telephoto

How to create a shallow depth of field

• Lens aperture
• Aperture priority
• F-Number/F-Stop
• Controlling the focus distance
• Zone of sharpness

Framing your image

• Rule of thirds
• Golden Section
• Foreground interest/Background detail
• Perspective
• The power of colour
• Lead-in lines/Convergence

When and how to use the focus for creative effect

• Auto Focus
• Manual Focus
• Foreground Focus
• Background Focus
• Focus Lock

Supporting your camera

• Tripods
• Monopods
• Bean bags

What happens to the image after it has been shot

• Downloading
• Storing
• Backing-up

Photography and the law

• Where you can shoot
• Public places
• Private places
• Photographing children

Utilising the Nature of Light

• Light sources
• Reflection
• Refraction
• Diffraction
• Polarization
• Light pressure and illumination
• Available light conditions
• Available light techniques

Flash Photography

• Flash synchronisation
• Flash intensity
• Fill flash
• Bounce flash
• Slave flash
• The advantages and drawbacks of flash
• Flashguns: their use, limitations, trigger voltages & rules of handling

File Formats - RAW vs JPEG

• Image quality guide
• Which file format is best?
• Compressed vs Uncompressed
• Wide dynamic range vs Narrow dynamic range
• Conversion
• File size
• Noise issues

Summary & Questions

Photography Training Courses
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