DSLR PHOTOGRAPHY

Learn your way around your camera and the mysteries of all those dials and knobs. They’re there for a good reason! Learn about white balance and why you should use it; learn about histograms is and how they make your pictures better. Learn all about what different lenses do, how to make your pictures sharper, how to expose an image properly and how to make the camera do what you want it to do. There’s more – this course is about creativity as well as technique, and we cover composition, light and colour as well as getting you started with some basic PhotoShop.

Course numbers are kept small so everyone can get the requisite attention. In addition to comprehensive lecture room instruction, you’ll be asked to complete a location assignment, have your photos critiqued and edited, and your best shots printed and exhibited in an end of course exhibition where you can show off to your nearest and dearest over a glass of wine. Best of all, you get to keep the art quality prints!

Lecturer – Simon Cowling

Simon Cowling has been a professional photographer for over 40 years, photographing for clients nationally and internationally. Simon helped design early courses at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney and has also taught widely in his own right. He has been a consultant for Polaroid in the marketing and development of new products, as well as heading the Polaroid large format 20×24 project in Sydney and Melbourne where he produced work with Australia’s leading artists and photographers. He is highly experienced in many fields including advertising, architectural, documentary and fine art photography.

DSLR Course Outline:

• Learn your way around your camera. Learn what all the knobs, dials and menu items do, which ones are important and which you can probably ignore for now.
• What white balance is and why you should use it.
• What a histogram is and how it makes your pictures better if you understand it.
• How to hold your camera properly (you’d be amazed how many people hold it wrongly!).
• Lenses. What and when to use wide angles, telephotos, macros and so forth. These are the photographer’s paintbrushes, and you must know how to use them properly!
• What exposure is, how it works and how to understand it so your pictures are exposed the way you want them, not the way the camera thinks you want them.
• The art of composition. This is the heart of good photography!
• Light sources – how different light quality affects the creative look of your pictures.
• Colour – how to use it to creative advantage, how colour affects the viewer and the final look of your image.
• Black and White. Powerful stuff – how to make it work for you creatively.
• Editing guidelines and how to keep your photos in some sort of logical order on your computer.
• How to properly reformat your memory card to keep it healthy.
• Some Photoshop techniques to get you started in making your images sing.

Please make sure you bring your camera’s instruction manual!

Course Fees: $440 inc GST for 4 session course plus Exhibition

January/ February 2012 (Scroll down for more dates)

March/April 2012 (Scroll down for more dates)

June/July 2012

October 2012