As lockdown for COVID-19 continues, it’s important to keep ourselves busy in order to stay sane! Because we have never had so much time on our hands, it’s a great opportunity to better ourselves. There are endless choices for online education. In this post I’m going to explore photography courses online and give you some free and paid choices.
Free Photography Courses Online
The best place to start for free photography courses online is YouTube. No matter what aspect of photography or photo editing you can think of, you will most likely find many YouTube videos that will teach you how to do it.
There are many YouTube photography tutorials on the Photographer’s Freedom website. You will find videos that will teach you Landscape Photography, Photography Basics, as well as Photography Business and more.
On the Skills Page of the website you will find the following categories:
- Landscape Photography Tips
- Lightroom Tutorials
- Nature Photography During Lockdown – a series that gives ideas about Nature Photography indoors and also teaches how to edit the photos.
- Nikon D5200 Tutorials
- Photography Basics
- Photography Business Tips
- Photography Gear Reviews
- Photoshop Tutorials
These categories are updated weekly so there will always be something new to learn.
YouTube tutorials are great and you can learn an awful lot from them. The problem with them is however that they are generally not structured into a “course” format. You have to switch from video-to-video and perhaps even channel to channel, and you will struggle to find a structured pattern of learning.
Due to this, you might consider purchasing an online course.
Photography Courses Online With Creative Live
One of the best websites I have found for online courses in photography, and just online courses in general is Creative Live.
Creative Live has courses in the categories of Photo and Video; Money and Life; Art and Design; Craft and Maker; and Music and Audio. With over 1500 courses, you are bound to find something that will interest you.
Perhaps the best thing about Creative Live is that it’s free to sign up, and they also stream many classes for free daily.
Adobe Photoshop CC The Complete Guide
I have purchased a few classes from Creative Live in the past and the value for money is fantastic. One of the courses I have done was Photoshop CC The Complete Guide. This course is presented by Ben Wilmore, a Photoshop wizard who has taught over 100 000 Photoshop users on all seven continents!
This course is amazing and I learnt so much from it, and I still learn from it today. With over 25 hours of class content and exclusive bonus content, you can’t go wrong with this course.
How To Shoot With Your First Flash
Another course I have done with Creative Live is How To Shoot With Your First Flash by Mike Hagen.
I had purchased a Yongnuo YN565EX flash and was not getting very good results using it. I had learned that using an external flash would yield better results than any on-camera flash, but I just was not able to get good shots.
After downloading this course and watching just a few lessons, I was able to get much better flash images. The information I got from the entire course has been invaluable in teaching me how to use an external flash.
Mike Hagen gives you tips about how to shoot with a single flash, which is great if you can’t afford more than one external flash. As a bonus, you also get Single Flash Gear List PDFs in various price ranges to help you decide what gear to buy.
If you are interested in learning flash photography, I highly recommend this course as a place to start.
More Photo and Video Courses
For more information about what is available to you in the Photo And Video category on Creative Live, please click on the image below:
More Recommendations for Online Photography Courses
A course that I am getting a lot of value out of at the moment is Art Of Photography by Jimmy McIntyre. This course is more for intermediate to advanced photographers.
Jimmy teaches you how to take great landscape, indoor, and Milky Way photography, and also how to edit the images using Luminosity Masks in Photoshop.
Jimmy McIntyre has many other courses available and also his amazing Raya Pro plugin for Photoshop which automates many tasks within Photoshop and makes editing so much easier. Click here for more information.
In Conclusion
In summery, it really doesn’t matter which course you choose. I realize that some of us are short on money right now and paying for a course may not be an option. Keep in mind that going the free route is probably going to mean not having structure to the way you learn.
Even if you learn one great thing from a course, the amount you spend on it is worth while. Creative Live have some great deals on at the moment. Also, you can always watch the courses live for free.
Enjoy the time you spend learning while in lockdown. If you make the most of this time now, you will be glad you did when you can finally go back out into the world. You will be much more valuable armed with all the knowledge you have accumulated.
Thank you for reading this blog today. Please check out all the links in this post for more information or to make a purchase. Make sure you share this post with other photographers who may get something from it.
