Free Photography Education

I wrote a blog last May about Photography Education and Inspiration. In it, I point readers to web sites where they learn about photography. Another great resource is Webinars and Webcasts. Top industry professionals and merchants often give hour-long classes on various topics. Often, if you can’t watch it live, you can go back and watch a recording. The following is a list of resources in no particular order.

1.) Creative Live. This Seattle-based group offers workshops that span 8-hours over three days (usually Fri-Sun) on topics such as; wedding photography, studio lighting and children’s photography. They get top-notch pros like Jasmine Star and Zack Arias to teach the workshop live. You can register and watch it for free or pre-purchase the entire show before the workshop ends at a discounted price. Once the workshop is over, you’ll have to pay more for the download. There’s a workshop starting tomorrow with Vincent LaForet for photographers looking to move into shooting video with their DSLRs.

2.)Peachpit Photo Club. The publisher of many photography books also hosts live webcasts with the likes of: Canon Speedliter, Syl Area; wedding photographer David Ziser and Photoshop Gurus, Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski. You can watch past webcasts on the site or register for upcoming shows.

3.)OnOne University. OnOne makes Photoshop plug-ins so, yes, their webinars are a little biased toward their products. But you can still learn from top photographers and see their editing workflows. Check out this link for a calendar of upcoming classes.

4.) X-Rite Photo. This is another merchant that is pushing its product while spreading some knowledge. There’s a webinar scheduled for today, in fact, about getting started in Lightroom.

5.) Friday Photo School. Every Friday there’s a new class on topics such as off-camera flash, posing and portrait lighting. They do offer the occasional free episode and you can download them from the archive. Most of the classes, however, cost $10 to watch or $15 to download later. Be sure to check out the library for the free ones.

In past blogs, I’ve already mentioned Kelby TV, which is the central location for shows such as: Lightroom Killer Tips, Photoshop User TV, Ask Dave and D-Town TV. On Monday, Scott Kelby is launching a new live show at 12:30 EST called “The Grid”.  It’ll be available to watch later if you can’t make the live broadcast.

So there you have it. It’s like going to photography school without the tuition! Yes, it requires a time commitment, but if you want to be a better photographer, what better way to do it than to spend some time with the pros offering a free education?

Harry Lim Photography’s Top Blogs to Follow

So I first heard of Alltop on Scott Kelby’s blog last year.  I didn’t think much of it. Dismissed it somewhat. At the time I was subscribed via email to David Hobby’s Strobist.com and Joe McNally’s Blog. On my customized Google page, I already had widgets to take feeds from a few other blogs including David Ziser’s Digital Pro Talk, Photoshop User TV, and Planet Photoshop. Then that list started growing. It now includes Virtual Photography Studio, Scott Bourne’s Photofocus and Photo Attorney. That doesn’t even include the photography sites I’ve bookmarked. I realized I needed a better solution to keep track of all the blogs I follow. I tried Google reader, but then I remembered Alltop.

Let me take a moment here to talk about the education of a photographer. I suppose you could take the traditional route and go to school to learn photography. Me? I’ve learned from blogs and websites and personal experience. I have a lot of peers who are relatively new to photography and love to schedule so many photoshoots that they hardly have time to edit the images afterwards. I agree that the best education is practical experience. Every shoot, every press of the shutter should be a lesson. But you also need time to “hit the books”.  Some of the world’s best photographers are sharing their knowledge for free! Why not take advantage? Set aside some time each day or each week to read a little…and learn a lot!

Ok, I’m off my soapbox. Now, go to www.alltop.com and create an account. Now you can customize your page and select your favorite blogs. The topics are not limited to photography but search for that topic and you’ll get a ton of photography related blogs. Just add your favorites and voila! You can even set the order of how they appear.

Here’s my alltop page: http://my.alltop.com/harrylimphotography.

I hope you’ll find some useful resources!