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Want to teach Digital Photography?
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I’m looking for people to teach our Beginners and Improvers Digital Photography Courses in different parts of the country. Knowledge of film photography is NOT required.
We would supply the notes, book the hotels, advertise the courses etc, all you have to do is bring your experience of digital photography to novice users. Experience of teaching is helpful, but a willing and open manner is more important.
Send me an email if you think this is something you’d like to do.
I spent 4 years teaching photography on a part-time basis for Galway VEC back in the late 90’s.
I would honestly say that to fully understand photography and even digital photography one has to
do the basics of photography and how it all worked in the film days. For example, understanding what red,
green & blue filters can do to light transmission in B&W photography and how film worked is really helpful.
I think that film photography must be part of any digital course or the student is only getting part of the
story.Thanks for your reply Gerry.
The simple truth is that people don’t want to know about film. I’m constantly being told by students who had taken other courses that the film bit not only went over their head, but they couldn’t see how it related to them.
I’m not a guru. I have no intention of force feeding information to people who don’t want it. The feedback is that film is dead and has no place in the modern digital home.
I happen to agree with that. I know it’s painful for those who both have a love of film and have invested a huge amount of time and effort in it. Sure you can’t even buy T-Max from professional outlets, it has to be pre-ordered in multipacks. As for colour film, the one hour labs are mainly developing the single use cameras. A chap I was talking to in Maynooth a couple of weeks ago told me that of the 106 rolls of film he had developed the previous week (down from many hundreds in previous years) only 8 had been rolls of film, the rest were single use cameras.
I taught film photography for 15 years, including dark room. I haven’t looked at a roll of film since 2001. Many of my students have never even owned a film camera. Knowlege of film is not needed to teach my courses and that is a deliberate choice based on my students needs and wants. It’s sad, but that’s life. It has a habit of moving on whether we like it or not.
Digitalbeginner – I’ve had a look at your website and think you just might have caught on to something good there. The advent of digital photography has revolutionized photography and there are far more people taking photographs now than ever before. They may not necessarily be good photographs, but that’s where you step in, right!? I’ve often said that the quality of photography in general has suffered because of the advent of digital – now anyone can go out and buy a reasonably priced compact digital camera and in the time it takes to unpack the box, they can take well focused, well exposed images which they can view on their computer moments later. But just because they are well focused and well composed does not make them good photographs!
I think we are now at the stage where digital is no longer “new”. Many people now realise that they can take properly exposed correctly focused images and want to take their photography to the next level. I have many years experience in traditional film photography and this has certainly helped make the transition to digitial much easier. Having said that, it was still a whole new learning curve for me and much of what I knew from my film days had to be thrown out the window to start again!
As a film user I’m sorry to see film go, and I don’t think it will ever die off completely. At the same time I’m delighted and excited by the opportunities that digital imaging has presented and the way it has made photography accessable to the masses. It’s understandable that professional photographers may feel threathend by digital photography, but those who have embraced it wholeheartedly will see the opportunities rather than the threats.
There is no doubt that the fundamentals of photography have changed little over the past 150 years or so – a good, well composed, well lit photograph is a good, well composed, well lit photograph regardless of whether it was captured on a glass plate, a piece of gelatine or a piece of silicon!
Many thanks to all who’ve responded to my request. I’ve been in touch directly with those who are seriously interested. I’m still looking for photographers in Galway who might be interested in teaching a structured digital photography syllabus.
The specific photography courses we are looking for people to teach are as follows:
Beginners – aimed at the complete novice http://www.digitalbeginners.ie/digitalbeginnersnight.htm
Improvers – aimed at those with a basic knowledge of photography (and usually have an SLR/Bridge SLR of some sort) http://www.digitalbeginners.ie/digitalimproversnight.htm.Please check out our course modules and see if these are areas you could handle questions and answers from. Illustrated lecture notes form the core of each class, http://www.digitalbeginners.ie/samplehandout.htm but an ability to field questions from a wide range of photography is also important including compact as well as SLR digital cameras.
Our concept is based on going to the customer, or at least as close as possible to minimise their travel time. So courses in or near city centres is what we’re aiming for.
ecp wrote:
…But just because they are well focused and well composed does not make them good photographs!
I wonder if you meant to write “well focussed and well exposed”. While the above statement could be true, I’d have thought that “well focussed and well composed” does go long way towards making good photographs.
I teach portraiture and lighting at a local school. What’s interesting is that over the last 3 years, the digital photography for beginners courses have been oversubscribed and the film courses have dwindled in numbers to the point of cancelling some of them. What is encouraging and really interesting is that some of the digital photography students wanting to go on and do film courses after they have learnt the basics on digital. There’s a buzz out of shooting and processing B&W film that seems to get to them. We’ve also seen an increase in darkroom and advanced printing courses. I think this may be due to the mimited availability of such things.
I haven’t shot a piece of film commercailly for a whle now but am still shooting for the fun stuff. I still get a kick out of seeing the negatives come out of the fixer with patterns on :)
Si
Course looks good DB.. I sat through 2 digital photography classes last winter and they didn’t do anything at all on the actual photography side of things. Both classes were based on photoediting & nothing else.
The majority of class participants had difficulty using the software, so for them I’m sure it was very beneficial. But i would have liked to get more on the actual photography side of things.
I’m a fair hand at the old point&shoot photography & have a decent eye. But I’m hopeless when it comes to playing with any of the manual settings on the camera… Unfortunately in my search for courses covering such material they all seemed to be film-camera based … and involved dark-room work as well which is not an option for me.
Your course outline is the first time I’ve seen a course that combines the actual camera usage & the post-work on the computer.
Best of luck with it !
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