Course Description

This course will appeal to students who have completed Photography Basics and are interested in increasing their skill levels in all kinds of weather and laying a foundation for studio photography. Would you like to know how to create compositions on a professional level? If so, this course will help you achieve your goal. Some of my former students are now photographing on a professional level. Over the past several years many students have e-mailed me, or phoned me, in regards to setting out another course. Without the input from my former students this course material would never have been completed and a special thank you to all who wrote me expressing their wishes and desires. You expressed further interest in studio work, lighting, filters, winter photography, black and white, more in-depth aperture & shutter control, more on composition, more people images, images that tell a story, more telephoto shots, more work in RAW images, more issues and practical work on manual white balance settings on those digital cameras, and "a lot more nature shots". Some also expressed more work with tripods, and why a tripod is important, noise factors on those higher ISO settings on digitals, reflectors and other related devices to enhance lighting situations. In other words, you want a lot of diversity. And that is what I hope to accomplish here. Instructor Al Mierau has been an avid photographer for over 50 years. For 15 years he was professionally photographing commercial and residential structures for mortgage, fire insurance, and courtroom evidence. Air Canada, Gardens West Prairie Edition, and Heritage Canada magazines have published his photographs. This is a 5 week, self-paced, online course. If you need additional help understanding the material presented, you can communicate with the instructor and fellow classmates. The instructor will monitor and track your progress throughout the class. LVS Online offers many wonderful learning tools to help you get the most out of your online course, including an online portfolio service that manages all your course registrations, certificate of completion option, a class discussion board to interact with your instructor and fellow classmates, free hosting account, and a student upload area. LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details. LVS students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration. If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements

A digital or film camera that allows you to manually set the aperture and shutter speed. For night time exposures a BULB or TIME setting is preferred but don't let that stop you, as slow shutter speeds are also suitable for some of this work. For studio work a camera that has a hot shoe device that allows for attachment of an external flash unit. (An option but certainly preferred) A tripod and ideally a control cable to trigger your shutter release. (The control cable can be an option but is preferred if you intend on doing a lot of this type of photography in the future) Image editing software to reduce the size of your images, preferably Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop or Elements. Homework must be reviewed by the instructor in order to earn a certificate. Students have the option of using the Student Upload Area or free web hosting made available for LVS students. Details are provided in the classroom. If you prefer to use your own web space, you must know how to upload your files to a server. Free tutorials are available: Basic HTML page WS_FTP SmartFTP Students should have working knowledge of their operating system: Free Windows Class Here Directory Structure Tutorial Here Zip files may be necessary to complete the exercises provided each week. WinZip, PKZip, Windows Compression or similar program is required to unzip these files. Winzip Tutorial Here Windows Compression These tutorials will show you how to crop and resize images that you want to place on your homework pages: Resize Images for the Web using Irfanview, a Freeware program *Mac* Resize Images for the Web using Goldberg 2.3, a Freeware program All lessons are available in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view/print the lessons. Plan to devote 2 - 4 hours per week on the lesson and assignment.

Course Prerequisites

Class Level - Intermediate to Advanced Photography Basics or a very good working knowledge of your digital or film based camera.

Course Syllabus

Lesson 1 - Introduction to Exposure Using your camera on manual exposure mode What is a lens Equipment recommendations for successful nightime photography Histograms. What they are, and how to make use of them in your digital images Lesson 2 Exposure - Understanding the Effect of ISO on your exposures Creatively Correct Exposures - how to get them Cover your ground images- Foreground, middle ground & background Depth of Field Studies Lesson 3 Minimizing Depth of Field Aperture and Macro Photography Lesson 4 Landscape- Nature- Sunrise & Sunsets - Night time images - White Balance - Available natural lighting Sunsets and Sunrises - get those deep colours Landscape tips Lesson 5 Digital noise Perspective Control and Cures The Importance of Light Lesson 6 Portrait Photography, exterior and interior studio Studio lighting and set up ideas

Course Excerpt

LESSON 1 Introduction to Exposure I assume you possibly here because we met in "Photography Basics". Whatever the reason, welcome. Over the past several years many students have e-mailed me, or phoned me, in regards to setting out another course. Without the input from my former students this course material would never have been completed and a special thank you to all who wrote me expressing their wishes and desires. You expressed further interest in studio work, lighting, filters, winter photography, black and white, more in-depth aperture & shutter control, more on composition, more people images, images that tell a story, more telephoto shots, more work in RAW images, more issues and practical work on manual white balance settings on those digital cameras, and "a lot more nature shots". Some also expressed more work with tripods, and why a tripod is important, noise factors on those higher ISO settings on digitals, reflectors and other related devices to enhance lighting situations. In other words, you want a lot of diversity. And that is what I hope to accomplish here. We are going to make use of a lot of different shutter speeds, aperture settings and ISO speeds. With respect to diversity. There are those who spend their entire time shooting inside of a studio, with umbrella units, and a camera set at 1/250th second and f8.0. Or it might be professional photographers who cover nothing but sporting events, for the most part using 1/500th of a second at f2.8 to record all their images. Then there are the rest of us, the "non-professionals" so to speak. Many of us spend a great deal of time in the great outdoors, taking pictures of all kinds, as well as doing some indoor shooting. To my mind these are the photographers that are best qualified to speak about the joy of photography in their lives. Without diversity you tend to become stale very quickly. We all share a common ground and that is the inability to consistently make what we term a correct exposure. Once you have gone past the automatic mode of your particular camera you will have a lot less of these incorrect exposures. Mastering that task is not all that difficult, it just takes some study and practice time. My "photography basic" class started out at a time when most of the students were using film cameras. Much has changed since only a few years ago with the advent of digital cameras. However a camera is still a camera whether it be film or digital. One method records the image on film, the other on a chip. Another major influence has been the development of photo-imaging software. Do you really want to spend all your leisure time "correcting" images on your computer? You goal should be to use photo-imaging software only as a last resort. No amount of imaging software is going to bring back blown out highlights caused by over-exposure. Learning how to make correct exposures with your camera not only saves you valuable time, but you get better images, and certainly you come away with a feeling of accomplishment. Now lets get started. In my previous class we spent one week where we used aperture control and one week where we shot images using only shutter control. We were are going to do a review on that aspect of photography and make a lot of use using those semi-control settings. One item we did not cover in Basic Photography, in regards to digital, except to mention it occasionally, was the effect of ISO on exposure. That is a final step, and an important one. For some of you the material presented in the next six weeks will be new to you. To others, it might be known, or known to some extent. Just by practicing the various techniques should have a positive effect on your photographic capabilities. And not everyone does everything equally. Some people very quickly develop the skills necessary to blur those water falls, some do not. Some people take fantastic sunrise or sunset images, some do not. And if you find something that really appeals to you, and works well for you, just run with it and show us those images. If you have some technique not covered in this course, that works well for you, we want to hear about it. Exposure - doing it manually I have in front of me a box of Kodak CX 135 film, with an expiry date of 1975. (I collect old gear). The ISO film speed is ISO80. Now there certainly were cameras back then that had built in light meters, and in fact my 1965 Pentax was fully automatic unless I set it otherwise. However many cameras were not and I certainly had some of those. They were totally manual. You either used an external light meter to set the shutter speed and f stop or as in the case of this CX135 you took the enclosed sheet of paper out of the film box and following the settings. And here is what they say. (in four languages) Bright or Hazy Sun (distinct shadows) f/11 1/125 sec Weak Hazy Sun (soft shadows) f/8 1/125 sec Cloudy Bright (no shadows) f5.6 1/125 sec Cloudy Dull (open shade) f4 1/125 sec (subject shaded from sun but lighted by large area of sky. Now how easy is that! I recall when I was a teenager, using a Brownie, black and white film,and looking at these figures that always came with every box of film. And for the most part the pictures I took all came out quite well, and in fact I have them all to this day, and unlike colour film, none of those black and whites have ever faded over the years. In fact in the early 60's I was using a German made 35mm film camera that was totally manual, and still relying on the figures that came with Kodak ISO25 slide film. After a while however I purchased an external light meter for $25.00 that quit working after 25 yrs. Not bad for $1.00 per year. That meter was dead on for Kodak slide film and I almost never got a bad exposure. Those figures above can still be used to this day, whether you are film or digital. Just dial in ISO100, or use ISO100 film. The difference between ISO80 and ISO100 is small. I have in fact mistakenly programmed in ISO400 when using ISO200 film, and vice versa, with no ill effects in many of the images. Of course with late model film cameras, the ISO is set be reading the data on the film after it is inserted and the door snapped shut. (that feature can be over ridden however on many cameras including my late model Pentax film camera) (ISO will be discussed starting in week 2) In Photography Basic we went off the auto-mode, and practiced by making use of Aperture Mode and Shutter Speed Mode. For lack of a better term, that is commonly called semi-automatic. You dial in or program a certain shutter speed, and the camera then selects the proper lens opening (f stop). Or you dial in the f stop, and then the camera calculates the proper shutter speed. One way of improving your exposures is to practice shooting entirely in manual mode and of course with digital there is no cost involved. If you are using film, one or two rolls should be enough. Once you have successfully shot some images totally in manual mode, photographing then in semi-automatic mode becomes much easier. We will make use of the camera's light metering circuitry and display however. You are probably now asking yourself, where would I ever make use of something using manual exposure. Here is but one example; fireworks shooting. Whenever you set your camera to any given f stop, and use BULB for time exposure, you are totally on manual. Your built in light meter has absolutely zero to do. We will be discussing night time images later on in the course material as well. I have always had good success shooting fireworks, using Fuji ISO 200 or 400 film, and using a 1986 model SuperProgram Pentax with a 28mm fixed wide angle lens. And I always use f2.8 to f4.0, and 3 to 20 seconds , I have never had an over-exposure issue. This first image immediately following was shot in July 2005 using that gear, in total manual control. (a tripod and a cable release are important for this type of photography) Continued... Please note: Lessons provide step-by-step instructions with detailed screen captures.

Course Goals

At the end of this course you will a better understanding of light, form, and composition. You will become more creative in your thinking process and along with your technical skills you will be able to take pictures of practically any subject matter.

Course Reviews

Dawn: (Liked Best:) [Liked best] "That Al the instructor and all the people in the class with positive attitude." More...