June 21, 2011

#22: Take a Photography Class

A couple months ago Living Social offered a deal for a 3 hour photography class in Hoboken. The class was offered by Digital Photo Academy and after perusing through their website for awhile, I jumped on the offer.

I knew I wanted to take the class before I went away this summer so that I could really make the most of my trip and take some amazing pictures! The best part about DPA was that they welcomed all cameras so I didn't feel bad about going to the class with my Plain Jane little point and shoot and I felt even better when 3 other people showed up to the class with their point and shoot cameras.

There were about 10 people in the class and the instructor, Rick was awesome. He spent the first 15 minutes or so chatting with us about our individual cameras and explaining some things about them. One thing I really appreciated was that he spent a lot of focused attention on everyone and really catered the class to what we were interested in. The class was a walking tour of Hoboken so we started at the train station and then spent 3 hours walking through the city taking pictures while he explained different techniques for shooting and framing shots, adjusting lighting and so on. The best part? I learned that my little point and shoot camera can actually do a ton of things that I had no idea it could do!


Before and after shots - learning to adjust the lighting of the camera to take a nice picture without backlight.


More before and after - learning to tilt the camera to make a picture more interesting.


Learning to adjust the lighting to take a picture exactly as it looks: note the sky in the picture on the right compared with the white background in the picture on the right.

Action shot!  

We met these 2 guys on our tour who were rugby playing photographers! They acted as our models after spending awhile talking to us about photography and their training! Interesting combination, huh?


Learning to use the color settings on my camera to take pictures of colorful things and to frame the picture to give it context!

So there you have it! I still have a lot to learn but I'm so glad I took this class! I learned so much and now I'm really excited about using all of the features on my camera while I'm away!

So my questions for you: Have you ever taken a photography class? What kind of camera do you have? Any photography tips for while I'm away?

7 comments:

  1. oh wow i love it! what settings did you use for the flower pictures? :)

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  2. Thanks for posting these!! I really want to look into a photography class, like I mentioned before. I'm glad you were able to get some more tips on how to take great pictures. Thanks for sharing and have fun taking pics!

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  3. very nice! after seeing these I definitely want to take a photography class and learn how to take advantage of my camera! :) I am sure you will have tons of awesome pictures from your travels!

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  4. I have never taken a photography class, but I have read a million photography books and joined websites dedicated to learning!

    I currently have a Canon Rebel XS

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  5. This sounds awesome, I should add this to my list, I would love to learn how to use my camera better.

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  6. I also bought a Groupon like that back in April and have been waiting for my summer vacay to try it out. I just emailed them to set up my session, and after hearing your awesome review, I'm really excited!

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