Basic digital photography training in Shrewsbury, Shropshire!

I wish I’d thought of doing this sooner, it’s so much fun! Because this is a subject I’m really passionate about, its easy for me to talk about it and teach people the basics. Photography is a subject I know inside and out. When i first thought of the idea it was a bit daunting as photography is such a large subject. But it was actually a lot easier than it first seemed. After a lot of planning, I finally put together lesson plans which will take people from knowing nearly nothing, to shooting portraits in manual by the end of day one! The only real problem, is not getting carried away and teaching to much! I don’t want to overload everyone with too much information! The feedback from all those that have attended so far has been brilliant, everyone has left the course happy and bursting with a new found understanding of photography. If you are planning to buy a new van click here for van sales ideas.

How does the training work? We start early on a Saturday morning, with lots of tea, coffee, bacon sandwiches (brain food!) and pastries to keep us going through the morning. After introductions, we get to know how a camera works, where the various controls and settings are on everyone’s own cameras. Then with the use of a PowerPoint presentation, photos and lots of hands on demonstrations and practice we cover, aperture, shutter, ISO, exposure, white balance, metering and lots lots more! We then look at composition and fill in flash. Throughout the morning I constantly check everyone is happy and its all sinking in, my priority is for everyone to learn how to use their camera.

In the afternoon, after a nice lunch at the boat house (incl in the course price) we start taking lots of photos! We cover so much I won’t explain all of it but most of the afternoon is shot fully manual, we look at depth of field, capturing and showing movement using shutter. We spend time starting to understanding light and using natural light for portraiture, eventually we start getting creative with portraiture, we even look at using reflectors. Plus during the whole afternoon everyone is constantly learning about composition, with constructive feedback on all there photos.

On the Sunday we re-group and start looking at what to do with all the photos after you’ve taken them, I cover file storage and management, we then look at Lightroom 4 importing and editing your images. As a professional photographer all my editing is done in Lightroom 4 so I show you how I do it. Once everyone’s happy with Lightroom we then take a look at studio lighting and make use of my studio. Studio lighting is a massive subject but my aim is to give a taste of how to start using studio lights, everyone takes some portraits of each other to get a feel for it and they begin to see what can be achieved with their cameras and some studio lights.

We finish of the weekend, with a good chat about what everyone wants to get out of photography, what are there aspirations, the next steps, what kit is out there they may be interested in or need. And what resources and training is available to develop them further.

Feed back has been great here are some comments from customers who have attended the training:

I had a fantastic weekend’s photography training and came away feeling motivated to go a step further with my photography skills. Everything I was unsure about was covered, and I learnt a lot of new things about my camera and feel more confident going out and about without using my auto button, I am so proud of getting to grips the manual settings after just a few hours. The highlights for me were taking the time to create amazing photos after learning about composition as I have never really looked into that before, and also having the opportunity to shoot in Mikes studio. I have always been interested in outdoor photography but now I would love to focus more on studio based potraits. Overall the weekend was professional, enjoyable and informative. Mike took the time to make sure we understood everything, and was eager to answer any questions I had. I’m already looking at investing in some new kit and the support forum he has set up is perfect for me to discuss my new purchases.”   –  Kate C

“A fantastic two day photography course covering all of the basics and much much more! Great advice given, knowledge shared and have come away from the course with a raft of new ideas and a renewed interest in taking great photographs. Cannot rate highly enough and would recommend to anyone wanting to improve their knowledge and skills.”  –  Charlie T

Here are some images taken by course attendees during the training, they have gone from complete beginner to taking these photos using fully manual settings:

For full course information check out the webpage http://www.mikehubbardphotography.co.uk/photography-training.php

I have limited spaces left in June, July and August, I keep the courses to a maximum of 4 people so get booked in now while you can!