About this Course
This class focuses on creative expression and inspiration in photography while building your technical competence. Through interactive discussions and demonstrations, we’ll address topics such as the art of seeing, visual storytelling, experimentation, style and how to manage personal creative challenges. Outside of class, assignments encourage you to explore, problem solve and sharpen your perceptive, creative and technical digital photography skills.
To make the most of your RAW captures, you’ll explore essential digital production tools in Adobe Lightroom Classic and progress to Photoshop later in the quarter. You’ll learn professional workflows for importing, organizing, culling and rating photos, selective color and tonality adjustments, HDR, panoramas, basic retouching and B&W conversion. You’ll also learn RAW workflows to move between Lightroom and Photoshop to harness the power of layers and masks that allow pixel-precise corrections and creative image montages. As a final project, you’ll propose and present a themed photographic project of six related images for review during the final week.
Local professional photographers, artists and program alumni will visit us to share their knowledge and life experiences and answer questions about the creative, technical and business aspects of their photography.
Past guests have included:
- Patrick Bennett, corporate, advertising and editorial photographer and videographer
- Kevin Cruff, corporate, advertising and editorial photographer and videographer
- Chris Jordan, acclaimed photographic artist, author, speaker and filmmaker
- Mary Dee Mateo, fashion, beauty, portrait and lifestyle photographer
- Rosanne Olson, portrait and corporate photographer, instructor and author
- Daniel Silverberg, outdoor lifestyle and product photographer
- Mukul Soman, landscape, wildlife, and CGI artist
What You'll Learn
- How to make informed creative choices to express your vision in photographs
- How to discover and guide your intention, intuition, awareness, vision, and spirit of exploration and experimentation
- An increased understanding of light (natural, modified, artificial), color, composition and timing
- How to control Lightroom CC Classic’s Library, Develop and Presentation workflows
- Ways to analyze, critique, write and speak about your work and that of others