tonywoodphoto@yahoo.com

Learn Photography Basics


Home2020-09-24T14:29:06-04:00
photographs showing the work of Anthony Wood

Learn Photography With Me

I’m offering online classes covering all aspects of photography, including cameras, software, lighting, and composition. I teach how to use Photoshop, Lightroom, and various apps at beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. I’ve taught photography one-on-one, as well as to small groups and large groups for non-profits and corporations. Being well-grounded in the basics of photography will support your work, whether it’s to create fine art or striking images for social media. Whatever goals you may have for photography, I can help you reach them.

I love teaching photography. Teaching gives me the excuse to dive ever deeper into this endless topic. I’ve been teaching since the early ‘90s, and there are always new things to learn and new dimensions of photography to explore. I love sharing this passion with my students. I love the challenge of looking at the big picture and then breaking it down to the most basic elements of a photograph. What are the pieces of a photograph and how do you put them together to create a coherent and wonderful visual statement? Putting my passion into words and guiding my students through the big picture to the basics has been very rewarding for me. I learn more and more with every class I teach.

Photoshop

Photoshop is simply the most sophisticated and comprehensive software out there. For many photographers, how we process our files has become a central part of the photographic process. Photoshop gives us tools for color correcting and enhancing, tonal and contrast adjustments, adding and subtracting elements, sizing, sharpening, blurring, as well as masks, selections, layers, adjustment tools, blending modes, warping, liquefying, and much more.

I can take you from the ground up or we can start somewhere in the middle. We can work through Zoom. The usual progression would be to first look at Bridge, Adobe’s browser that comes with PS and from there we’ll explore Adobe Camera Raw, the raw processor used by PS and Lightroom. Next stop is the layers pallet, ground zero for working on a file in PS. In the layers pallet, we can stack images and tools and spin the magic with photographs that only PS can create.

Light

Light is what we capture with our cameras, Light is what our images are made of in photography. Understanding what light is and how to use it empowers us and opens up new creative possibilities. Whether you are shooting street photography, still life, macro, architecture or portraits, how you find or create the light is a huge part of the look and style of your images. Whatever the subject, how it’s lit will change the mood and feel of the image.

Light has been a center piece of my own work the past 40 years. Awareness of how to use light will both save you from disaster , allow you to take a shot in difficult situations and create the look and style that’s appropriate for your work. Whether it’s available light, studio strobes, on camera flash, LEDs or hot lights, I can help you take your lighting skills to the next level.

Composition

Composition is central to all visual art. The power of the image to draw the viewer in is usually tied into the composition, i.e. how we design the visual elements in our image. Grid patterns, like the rule of thirds, armatures, the Golden Rectangle and Golden Spiral, etc. These are just some of the time-tested patterns we can use to lay out the content of our image. The visual elements are the stuff of our images: The Point, Lines, Shapes, Tonality, Form, Space, Depth and Color. Our awareness in seeing and skill in capturing these elements in an intriguing design is the challenge we face as visual artists. Each genera of photography has it’s own conventions and traditions around subject matter, technical issues, how light is used and how a message or mood is conveyed.

This is one of my favorite topics and offers an endless range of possibilities for photographers and and visual artists of any medium.

Smartphones

Smartphones are now the most popular kind of camera. The ease of use, the portability, the simplicity and image quality have all contributed to photography becoming the worlds favorite art form. Now with most people having a camera in their pocket we are seeing an explosion of images being used for communication in business, the arts and in home life.

Whether you are shooting friends and family or products or business meetings, the phone has become a powerful tool for commerce and pleasure. Learning how the phone camera works can empower you to capture the image quality you need. Correct color, sharpness, brightness, cropping, sharpening, outputting, freezing action and amount the challenges we all face with our photos. Once you have some images, some basic knowledge about software can correct and enhance the color and brightness of our photos.

This class is great for individuals or groups that need to take great photos for work or for play.

Portraiture

Portraiture has been one of my main creative and professional endeavors for the past 40 years. Whether for business or art, I strive for interesting and beautiful light, along with a great background to enhances my subject.

Lighting a face is an art form. Knowing how light sculpts the plains of a face with highlight, specular highlight, shadow and contrasts gives you an endless range of creative possibilities. The color of light, whether it’s hard or soft and the direction it comes from are all pieces of the process to make engaging images.

Your lighting tools can be the sun, shade, windows, strobes, LEDs or hot lights. Whatever tools you use, the principles are the same. I can teach you many ways to employ these tools to create portraits for commerce or fine art.

Cameras

Cameras are light capturing devices. A Digital SLR or mirrorless camera are a wonder of modern technology. Even so the principles of how a camera work are still largely the same as film cameras. The challenges of taking a good picture include: getting the right exposure, how f stop is connected to depth of field, how shutter speed freezes action and ISO can be used to shoot in low light situation. Other important settings include: focusing, auto focus, sharpness and detail, white balance for correct color, histogram for evaluating your exposure, the mode dial’s settings for Manual /Aperture Priority / Shutter Priority Auto and Program modes, when to use exposure compensation, how and when to use a tripod, the pop up flash, lenses and much more.

While perhaps daunting, all of this is very finite and can be quickly learned.

abstract portrait twilight and orange light
fine art portrait
building in northern Philadelphia
photoshop art made with layers
composite photograph showing what Photoshop can do
diana-camera-photograph
composite Photoshop layered
Close Sliding Bar Area

About My Work

I’m available for group or individual photography instruction. I can give Zoom presentations on any topic in photography. Smartphone, lighting, composition, how cameras work, macro, critiques of your work, how to make money with photography, Photoshop and mobil apps for editing. Call me any time at 610.733.9349 or email me at tonywoodphoto@yahoo.com

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