10 Free Online Photography Courses, Tutorials, and Seminars

10 Free Online Photography Courses, Tutorials, and Seminars

Digital cameras have opened up the world of photography for so many people, but even if you're only "pointing and shooting," there are lots of tips and tricks out there that can help you increase your knowledge and expertise.

Indeed, no matter what your photography skill level, you can find loads of free information online to help you take your photos to the next level and have all your friends asking who took those professional-looking shots.

Here are 10 free online photography courses, tutorials, and seminars that can help you become a better photographer:

1. Beginning Photography Tips & Techniques Video Series: eHow's 14-part series that explains the differences between using a 35 mm camera and a digital camera, how to load film into a 35 mm camera, various film formats, how to correctly use light meters, and other basic photography techniques.

2. Jodie Coston's Classroom: Ten free lessons from an award-winning freelance photographer covering composition, aperture, shutter speed, landscape, portraits, and more. Very comprehensive and also includes discussion sections.

3. Night Photography Lesson: Offered by School of Photography, this free online course explains the basics of night photography, including timed photos, flash guns, and self timers; other paid courses offered as well.

4. PhotoFlexLightingSchool: Free lessons for those who wish to improve their photographs through increased knowledge of the use of lighting.

5. PhotographyCourse.net: Offers beginning, intermediate, and advanced film and photography courses covering areas such as optics, cameras, light, webpage layout, and digital photography.

6. Photo Seminars: Comprehensive list of available seminars, including those devoted to wildflowers, travel, winter photography, and a special 3-part series on garden photos.

7. PhotoWalkThrough: Collection of tutorials on how to use photo editing software, particularly Adobe Photoshop.

8. ShortCourses.com: "The On-Line Library of Digital Photography," which runs the gamut on digital camera information from basic camera equipment to pixels and image sensors.

9. SLR Photography Guide: Collection of tutorials on everything you need to know about using your SLR digital camera.

10. Suite101 Photography Basics Course: Four lessons covering the history of photography, your camera "toolbox," camera basics, and lighting.

Happy snapping!

Guest post by Michelle Fabio, About.com Guide to Law School, who also writes about online nursing education at OnlineNursingEducation.org and loves playing around with her digital camera. Check out her photos at Flickr!

Merlot Conference, Second Life for Education, etc., etc.,

HI all,

I have just returned from the Merlot Conference in San Jose! I have to say that my head is spinning there is so much going on at Merlot that it is not possible to sum it up in one blog post, but I will start with some general observations.

John Willbanks provided the opening Keynote. John is from the Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/) a non-profit organization that provides "edicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof." (retrieved from http://creativecommons.org/about/)


I had committed myself to facilitating four Second Life tours with the presenter in world, I was apprehensive to say the least! It was a trial and error/pilot project! While I think the technology worked beautifully there were certain things that I learned I could not do such as opening people's profiles, going in to mouselook, and doing searches while having my screen projected to the meeting room. If I did any of these things my computer locked up and I had to totally reboot the computer.

Saying that though I do believe the tour of Virtual Ability was well received and special thanks to Gentle Heron and especially Eme Capallini for Virtual Ability and conducting this presentation. I was pleased to see so many new people just coming in to Second Life at the conference..and doing so well as they got their "virtual world bearings" and were getting teleported and participating in the sessions. I hope they go back to Virtual Ability and participate in the orientation.

The next presentation was from Jonathon Richter, Wainbrave Bernal, who gave us a tour of the Merlot Campus and a presentation on the new CLIVE hud developed by SIFY...let me say this technology is amazing. This innovation in Second Life really had folks at the conference buzzing about the use of Second Life as a means to access Merlot resources!

On Saturday we had an excellent presentation from AJ Kelton Director of Emerging Instructional Technologies at Montclair State University. I give AJ a hard time but he is really the one who introduced me to the use of Second Life as content for learning, creating a learning environment and learning experience in world. The Theorist Project at Montclair State does just that.
Finally we toured Sci Lands, Jim Zeigler of Northern Michigan University introduced us to the Speech and Language Center in Second Life. With a larynx that an avatar can walk through, interactive quizzing, and more than life size ear that can be toured this is an amazing build. The person who built this learning environment is top notch and I encourage you to contact Jim for more details. His contact information is on the NMU website. As I checked NMU's website I see there are many innovations occurring in Second Life by educators there.

IN addition to this I would like to point out that some of these sessions are not so much about the build itself but what can be done and how it can be done in Second Life. Hopefully people picked up tips on navigation and communication through these sessions. In addition to this I hoped that they learned something about resources on the web regarding Second Life and how to use those to learn more about the program.



I would like to recognize the Elluminate sessions I also facilitated. The technology worked great but I learned a lot..it's best to block off a whole day for presenting these sessions rather than individual blocks of time for each. We did trials runs with each presenter prior to the session and that seemed to work fairly well.

I was thrilled with Judy Greaves presentation on the Library of Commerce there is a great deal of quality resources there to incorporate into your course and it is well organized and indexed. Other presentations using Elluminate included Turning Technologies on gaming and Ramona and Carmen on Web 2.0 tools application to teaching.

Overall a great conference I was honored to go and in spite of the technical hiccups I hope we see an expansion on the virtual conference next year!

Book discussion The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr

Sometimes a good non-fiction book can be even more engaging than a good fiction and such was the case for me when I read Nicholas Carr’s The Big Switch, Rewiring the World from Edison to Google. Nicholas Carr also wrote Is Google Making us Stupid?

This book provides an analogy between the development of electricity to the development of internet, computer applications and technology as a utility. Based upon this analogy we are on the precipice of seeing computer and internet services as ubiquitous. It is a new age that is both exhilarating for information junkies like me and can be extremely frightening as we consider the data gather capabilities and the privacy that we are giving up as we create a “web based” identity.
In Carr’s comparisons he views the Internet as follows:
1. As utility
2. As disruptive technology
3. Change to how we work
4. Change how businesses operate
5. Change in business models
a. What previously took 1000’s of employees now may only take a handful
b. Advertising—revenue is generated by clicks on ads not by content or service
6. Web content is not generated by “experts” but by users and amateurs and peer reviewed by users for credibility.

When Carr wrote this book Cloud Computing was not the buzz word of the day . Today there are many variations of defining this term:
Wikipedia: Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet.[1][2] Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them.[3]

IBM: Cloud computing focuses on the user, and offers highly efficient acquisition and delivery of IT and information services. Cloud computing is defined and characterized by massive scalability, superior user experience, and new, Internet-driven economics.

Martin McBrown’s Blog: Grids and cloud computing share many of the same features - large sets of computers that can be used to handle 'work'. The distinction between grids and clouds is that in a grid you tend to have a huge array of computers working on a single tasks or purpose..
whereas in a cloud the computing power is a general resource that we can use for pretty much anything.

Carr gives a fascinating illustration of how companies such as Flickr, YouTube, and others handle millions of videos, photos, and other media with relatively small staffs, accessing resources of companies such as I BM and Amazon, and demonstrated how these companies welcome their use. Second Life uses services from Amazon to manage their log-in services.
Reading this book you begin to notice a trend though. This means your activities in the “cloud” are not anonymous, not just with Flickr, YouTube, or Linden Labs. These service providers may be accessing and storing data on user activities in a variety of areas.

The world is changing, it seems at a quick pace, however it started with Edison and electricity as a utility.