Photography: Technical Skills Workshop

What you'll learn

Learn to improve your technical photography skills with our photography short courses in Sydney!

Photography is both a creative and a technical art form, the two go hand in hand. Without the creative vision, the technical skills are useless, and without the practical skills, the vision is just a dream. Once you have mastered the basics of your camera functions, all beginner photographers need to be able to master the technical aspects of their camera to make their creative vision come to life.

Perhaps you want a shot to look a certain way but you don't know how to light it, or you may want to achieve a certain depth of field but can't seem to replicate your idea in the viewfinder. This technical photography course takes your beginners knowledge and adds the tools of lighting, metering, correct exposure, motion blur and a helpful understanding of the various camera accessories at your disposal and emboldens any budding amateur to take that next leap into taking images with real impact.

The aim of this photography course is to combine theoretical and practical knowledge to enable you to approach a shot with more proficiency and confidence. If you're looking to grow your skills as an amateur then this photography course is for you!

Learning outcomes

By the end of this Technical Skills course, you should be able to:

• Control light quantity and quality with in-camera methods
• Apply advanced techniques for controlled exposure variations
• Integrate camera operational control with specified creative output
• Use light quality attributes to enhance photographic impact
• Apply simple resolution processes to complex colour control issues
• Extend the diversity of options for scene interpretation and technical capture

Course content

What will be covered in this Technical Skills course?

First Session

Camera skills

• Bracketing & Auto-exposure bracketing
• Tonal Range & Dynamic Range
• High Dynamic Range (HDR)
• Lens filters

Exposure variations

• Histograms & exposures
• High key / low key exposures

Practical session:

• Bracketing techniques
• Long exposures

Second Session

Transmissions of Light & Special Effects

• Special effects techniques
• Reflections & Refractions
• Transparencies & Translucencies
• Diffractions & Distortions

Variations of light

• Time of day & natural light
• Colour casts & artificial light
• Colour temperature
• White balance & colour corrections

Practical session:

• Special Effects
• White Balance

Intended audience

Who is this Technical Skills course for?

This technical photography program is for photographers who have completed our Photography Course for Beginners or an equivalent course, and who want to improve their technical skills in photography and are confident and experienced in manual camera operations.  Special consideration can be given to students who feel they meet the requirements so please check the learning outcomes of our Photography Course for Beginners.  This course is not for beginner photographers or photographers with an unfamiliar new camera.

This course is for photographers to broaden their capabilities to other genres of photography; for previous students of photography who want a technical update course; or have upcoming travel plans; for photographers who want to consolidate their technical skills across a variety of conceptual and practical site conditions; or who want inspiration in their photographic journey and want interesting challenges to solve. 

You should take a particular interest in this course if you have are looking to focus on developing technical and practical skills that pertain to specific camera functions rather than focusing on compositional and creative aspects of photography.

Course materials

What to bring to class

• Digital SLR /Mirrorless Camera + lenses as available
• SD Card with a minimum of 8GB of memory
• 1 fully charged camera battery
• Tripod or monopod is helpful but not a requirement