Soft Lite Studios

To Be Announced!

Photography 101: Discover The Photographer Within

Are you ready to unlock the full potential of your camera? Then this beginning photography course is perfect for you!

This beginner-friendly photography class is your gateway to unlocking the power of your camera and developing a confident artistic vision.
This course offers an engaging and practical approach to essential techniques and creative principles for impactful photography. We will explore the use of camera settings, composition, and light to tell a story that evokes emotion in the viewer.

Through hands-on exercises and insightful lessons, you will learn to:

• Master Your Camera: Learn fundamental camera functions, including aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, so you can confidently control exposure and creative effects in any lighting situation.
• Compose Captivating Images: Explore and apply classic composition principles like the rule of thirds, leading lines, and framing to create visually appealing and impactful photographs.
• Harness the Power of Light: Understand how different light sources (natural and artificial) affect your images and learn to manipulate them to create mood, texture, and enhance the overall quality of your photos.
• Control Focus and Depth of Field: Discover how to effectively utilize depth of field to isolate your subject and achieve captivating background blur (bokeh) or ensure sharpness throughout your landscape shots.
• Work with Lenses and Filters: Explore the impact of various lens types and focal lengths on photographs and learn how filters can add creative control and protection.

This class provides the foundation needed to confidently create high-quality images and begin a photographic journey, regardless of the camera used.

Prerequisites:

• A camera (film, DSLR, or mirrorless) that has manual controls is required. Hands-on exercises make having the camera in class highly beneficial. You will need at least one lens to evaluate the results of control exercises.
• You may attend this class in one of two ways:

1. With a class voucher provided by your retail camera store
2. Purchasing a seat in the class

Photography 102: A Deeper Dive Into Photography

Are you ready to dig deeper into photography? Then this intermediate photography course is perfect for expanding your knowledge of photography!

This intermediate photography class builds upon the foundational knowledge acquired in the Photography 101 class. It focuses on empowering students to move beyond automatic camera modes and take greater creative control over their images. This course uses an engaging and practical hands-on approach to reinforcing these newer and more advanced photographic concepts.

Through hands-on exercises and insightful lessons, you will learn:

• Master More Advanced Camera Settings
• Aperture and F-stops: Understanding how aperture controls depth of field and using it to create blurry backgrounds (shallow depth of field) for portraits or sharp focus throughout a landscape (deep depth of field).
• Shutter Speed: Learning to utilize shutter speed to freeze fast action or intentionally blur motion for artistic effects.
• ISO: Exploring ISO settings for optimal image quality in different lighting conditions, understanding the trade-off between sensitivity and potential image noise/grain.
• Exposure Modes: Beyond "Auto", understanding and utilizing manual (M), aperture-priority (A or Av), shutter-priority (S or Tv), and program (P) modes for specific shooting scenarios.
• White Balance: Learn how to effectively set white balance controls to represent colors in varying lighting conditions properly.
• Metering and Exposure Compensation: Understanding how the camera measures light and how to use exposure compensation to fine-tune exposure for desired results.
• On-Camera Flash Basics: Gaining a basic understanding of when and how to use the built-in flash or external flash units effectively.
• Advanced Concepts and Techniques
• Composition Beyond the Basics: Looking at some more advanced composition concepts and taking a deeper look at the Elements of Design, learning to use space more effectively, controlling the elements of the scene that are drawing attention, and mastering visual weight.
• Lighting Beyond Natural Light: Introduction to artificial lighting, such as off-camera flash, reflectors, and softboxes, to control and shape light for different effects.
• Basic Image Editing: An introduction to photo editing software like Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, covering essential tools for adjusting brightness, contrast, color, and sharpness.
• Developing a Personal Style: Exploring ways to refine a unique artistic voice and create a consistent photographic style.

This class provides the next step in the path to becoming a more proficient and artistic photographer, allowing for more advanced usage of the camera system.

Prerequisites:

• A camera (film, DSLR, or mirrorless) that has manual controls is required. Hands-on exercises make having the camera in class highly beneficial. You will need at least one lens to evaluate the results of control exercises.
• You may attend this class in one of two ways:

1. With a class voucher provided by your retail camera store
2. Purchasing a seat in the class

Okay, so here's another one by request...

"An Evening with Topaz Labs"

The Topaz Labs tools are regarded as some of the finest photo editing plug-ins that you can add to your photo editing workflow. From noise reduction to resizing to sharpening, the results of these plugins are highly regarded and well reviewed in industry editing blogs.

Join us for the evening and I will give you a preview of the most popular Topaz Lab tools and show you how I have used them in my digitial editing workflow.

Meeting Schedule:

1. 6:00 - Introduction, Meet New Members
2. 6:10 - Old Business
3. 6:20 - New Business
4. 6:30 - Pre-Shoot Briefing/Education
5. 7:15 - Break
6. 7:30 - Image Critique
7. 8:00 - Adjourn

Pre-Shoot Brief/Education:
Topaz Labs

Image Critique:
Previous Photoshoot Images (TBD). If anyone has images they would like critiqued, please provide them at the beginning of the meeting.

Providing Images for Critique:
For now, I will collect images at the beginning of the meeting on a USB memory stick. My computer has USB-C ports, so a USB-C memory stick or one with dual (USB-C / USB-A) ports will be needed.

Images should follow these format rules:
JPG - 80% quality or higher
132 dpi resolution
2048 pixels across the long edge
Embedded colorspace - sRGB