Course A.

Be a Better Photographer: Vision, Creativity, Techniques

Whether you are taking photographs to document precious moments, or to share or impress others, or to create beautiful images or to make a living, this course will help you doing it better, and improve your Photographic Vision, Creativity and Techniques. In that order, because techniques should be used to serve needs, not to lead them.

Curriculum

1. Why do I photograph? – Set personal goals.
   Personal goals are beacons to guide you in the learning process. You can change your long term or short term goals along the way, but you can’t learn photography properly without having specific goals.
2. What do I photograph?
   Seeing beyond the object: Looking at the complete picture that goes into the frame.
   Content: The artistic statement, aesthetics and the emotional world.
3. Waiting for a decisive moment, or preplanning?
   Learn flexibility: there is an infinite number of ways to combine these options. Base your strategy on goals, not on strict rules or fixed ideals.
4. In Camera Creativity.
   Multiple exposures; slow or fast shutter speeds; deliberate camera movements; creative use of flash. This is a daring game. Only a few use risky techniques when there is no second chance.
5. Being Technical: The Camera and the Lens Settings.
   Using the camera under different light and movement conditions; controlling sharpness and depth of field; know your histograms to optimize light; get familiar with all of your camera and lens settings options.
6. Being Technical: The Image Destination.
   The final image should be optimized for its destination, be it the computer screen, the internet, the smartphone or a print. An optimal image size, sharpness intensity, the choice of color space and color profiles must be destination oriented. Often, so is the use of color management and monitor calibration. An excessive amount of work may not only be time consuming and memory expensive, but also superfluous and unnoticeable.
7. Post Processing.
   A basic knowledge of a viewing software, most of which are capable of at least some editing, is a must in digital photography. If desired, we may be looking at two of the best free software available for viewing and editing.
   The two most important professional post processing software, Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop, will be studied at least at the introductory level.
8. For more intensive studies of post processing see the Modular Courses (C) aimed to work with Lightroom and Photoshop.

Course B.

Definitions & Settings

This course teaches you elements you must know to become a serious digital photographer: The camera settings and options, the software preferences, color spaces and monitor calibration.

Curriculum

Camera settings and options.
Lightroom preferences options: import to Lightroom and export to Photoshop.
Photoshop preferences options: Working space, Color spaces, color Profiles, Color Conversions and Metadata.
Metadata: choosing the technical information you save with an image – the photographer’s information and copyright statement, camera settings, photo location, post processing procedures and color profiles.
Adapting saving options to the image destination (computer screen, internet, smartphone or print).
Color spaces in Lightroom and Photoshop: what are they, why are they important, and how to determine them?
The calibrated monitor: What is it, how can it be done and why is it important?

C. Post Processing Modules

Lightroom and Photoshop are very powerful modular programs. This set of modular private courses is meant to be as flexible, guiding you through the basics or in depth, as needed. There are no strict rules. You may begin your training with a module of your choice, go as deep as needed, then borrow an important tool from another module, and then stay and dig deeper with yet another module and techniques if this is required by your photographic goals.

Curriculum

1. Lightroom (or Camera Raw): Using the advantages of RAW files.
2. Photoshop: Adjustment Layers – Advanced procedures.
3. Photoshop: Blending – Advanced procedures.
4. Photoshop: Light and contrast – much more than adjustment layers.
   Adjustment layers are great for changing light and contrast, but there are many other creative powerful tools to control light in an image.
5. Photoshop: Masks are not only “brush” movements and “selective tools”.
   The use of advanced non trivial methods for the creation of masks may often free you of the need of a brush.
6. Photoshop: A smart use of Smart Objects.
7. Photoshop: Retouching – Cleaning and Evacuating.
   Learn advanced retouching procedures, and how to transform some advanced known procedures into more precise ones.
8. Photoshop: Sharpening.
   Almost all photos require some sharpening, and almost always sharpening works best locally rather than uniformly throughout the image. Local sharpening also emphasizes certain elements in the photograph at the expense of others, and may have a strong impact on composition. Here you’ll learn different methods to create efficient sharpening, particularly local sharpening, some of which I developed myself. Photoshop is much better at sharpening than Lightroom, yet it is easy to do it incorrectly.
9. Photoshop: Sharpening Colors.
   Most sharpening tools work with luminosity, and if used cleverly, also avoid unwanted color changes. Some tools enable color contrasts, but usually via global changes in hue and saturation. Here you’ll learn how to increase color contrasts locally with complementary colors, a method that pretty much imitates sharpening made by classical painters.
10. Photoshop: Blur.
    Blurring and smoothing are important in retouching, but also for reducing digital noise.
11. Photoshop: Working in Lab Color Space.
    The built in separation between luminosity and colors in the Lab color space enables much easier operations of color changes and color corrections than in any other color space. Lab color space also has some important advantages in retouching. Once you learn to see colors in Lab, there is no way back: your color photos will make a lot more sense.
12. Photoshop & Lightroom: Creating Black & White images.
    There is an infinite number of methods to transform a color digital image to black and white, hence an infinite number of black and white end products. Photoshop is by far more advanced than Lightroom in black and white transformation. For whoever wants to create black and white photographs regularly, this is a mighty important module, way beyond presets.
13. Photoshop: Composite Images.
    Masks use is the standard method for compositing images, although not always the easiest one. Here you’ll learn also other methods to compose images, such as blending modes aided by adjustment layers. You’ll also learn how to preplan composites at the picture taking stage, in order improve creativity and precision.

What Participants Say:

Tali:

“I think my main feeling about this experience has been the sense of deepness and thoroughness that forced me to examine my photos in parameters so different from conventions (I liked/didn’t like, it’s beautiful/it’s not), which was of course very refreshing and uplifted my insight and understanding in this infinite medium – photography. Like anything else, the more we learn the more we know there is still much to learn.

The experience was enriching, horizon widening and challenging. I thank you for your lots of patience, the ability to adapt whatever’s been said to the exact place I had been in in terms of both my technical/photographic knowledge and my interests. And of course for your willingness to share with me your incomprehensibly vast knowledge.

Thanks much for all of it, and if it is not clear, I will be happy to participate in any future initiative or offer.”

(Translated from Hebrew)