I've enrolled on a P/T Photography AS Level course

electrolyte

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Just wanted to share this with you all (although no one may be interested!).

Yesterday I enrolled on a part time AS Level Photography course at my local college. It starts in mid September and will be every Monday night for 2.5 hours. The course is biased towards getting students to produce shots of a higher artistic level. I feel that I know the technical side quite well (ie f-stops, iso, shutter speed etc) but I struggle sometimes to come up with good enough compositions so this course should help me loads. Plus I'll be with 15-20 other like-minded people and can learn from them too. Met the tutor last night and he seems to be a nice bloke so it should be good. The best news is that it only cost £171 for 34 weeks of tuition which I think is a bargain.

A colleague of mine at work has just finished the course and she got an A grade too. Her photos have come on in leaps and bounds during the course so hopefully mine will too.

I'm really excited and can't wait for it to start. Will let you know how I get on (plus post any of my "coursework"!)
 
Back to school eh ? Not so bad when it's a subject you're interested in. Don't forget to submit all your homework to this site once a week so we can all mark it :)

Ray
 
Excellent. Where abouts is it? Is it digital or just photography in general? Been looking for a course in Leeds but they seem to be sparse. Found one and the college aren't bothered to reply to emails/pick up the phone.

Good luck with it and post your pictures!
 
Rayfin said:
Back to school eh ? Not so bad when it's a subject you're interested in. Don't forget to submit all your homework to this site once a week so we can all mark it :)

Ray

I know, it does feel like that. I did my A-Levels in 1990 so it does seem strange to do another one, admittedly it is only half an A-Level but still it feels strange. But it is in something I am very interested in so I will be more motivated this time I reckon!

Will certainly appreciate any marking you guys can do for me!
 
cdrider said:
Excellent. Where abouts is it? Is it digital or just photography in general? Been looking for a course in Leeds but they seem to be sparse. Found one and the college aren't bothered to reply to emails/pick up the phone.

Good luck with it and post your pictures!

It is in Sheffield so not that far from Leeds. Course details here

It isn't a digital only course as they have a darkroom and quite a few students still use film. The tutor says that they are gradually moving over to digital. He said that for instance they have 7 Nikon D70s for students to use but as I already have a 350D I'm not bothered by that. He also warned me that they don't have many computers but again as I have a laptop that I could use I'm not bothered about that either. But I'm just looking forward to learning more about how famous photographers have taken shots and applying that knowledge to my work.

In fact my colleague who just finished the course started with an old SLR and bought a Nikon D70 while she was on the course.
 
It's a great idea mate. You just can't beat these sort of evening classes for value for money too. Best of luck with it.
 
Gordon @ Convergent AV said:
Nice work. I was looking through my local courses here and couldn't find anything...I really want to take some sort of course to learn more about lighting and, well, everything....

G

That's a shame Gordon. They have a studio at the college which i will be able to use so hopefully I'll learn how to light that properly. From the sounds of it the course should cover most of "well, everything". Time will tell.
 
Nice one. I noticed a lot of courses offered up in Leeds etc, there's nothing down here in the Shires!

I went on a studio course yesterday in London, it was fantastic. Plugging into the studio lighting and shooting with the EV bar flashing at -2 is just plain weird :)

Spent the whole day playing with lights, backgrounds, poses etc.

Also learnt a few Speedlite tricks :smashin:

K.
 
kavster said:
Nice one. I noticed a lot of courses offered up in Leeds etc, there's nothing down here in the Shires!
Hey, we're a shire as well you know - yorkSHIRE!

kavster said:
I went on a studio course yesterday in London, it was fantastic. Plugging into the studio lighting and shooting with the EV bar flashing at -2 is just plain weird :)

Spent the whole day playing with lights, backgrounds, poses etc.

Also learnt a few Speedlite tricks :smashin:

K.

That sounds cool - hopefully I'll get to do the same :smashin:
 
Good for you, it will be interesting to hear how you get on.
 
have just looked at our local college as they are doing 3 digital photography courses Level 1 is a year and costs £125 pound but is at 11.30am - 1.30pm which is completely useless timewise.

The others are same lengths, but i'd like to do the intro course first (try and understand f-stops etc first)

wish they would do a more usefull time than that :mad:

Gary
 
nealgs said:
have just looked at our local college as they are doing 3 digital photography courses Level 1 is a year and costs £125 pound but is at 11.30am - 1.30pm which is completely useless timewise.

The others are same lengths, but i'd like to do the intro course first (try and understand f-stops etc first)

wish they would do a more usefull time than that :mad:

Gary

That's a real shame Gary. My course is 6-8.30 which is great timing but 11.30 - 1.30 sucks - obviously designed for the retired.
 
nealgs said:
have just looked at our local college as they are doing 3 digital photography courses Level 1 is a year and costs £125 pound but is at 11.30am - 1.30pm which is completely useless timewise.

The others are same lengths, but i'd like to do the intro course first (try and understand f-stops etc first)

wish they would do a more usefull time than that :mad:

Gary

Check out Park Lane College in Leeds - deffo some 'out of hours' part time photography courses.

Ray
 
Good work - If you have any interest in photography then these courses (the ones you actually want to do, and sign up for!) are great.

I speak from experience... When I was completing my A-levels many moons ago, I enlisted at my local nightschool on a GCSE level Photography course. My old man also signed up at the same time as he was well into cameras then (Still is, but I swear his eyesight ruins all his pics now, even WITH autofocus :rotfl: ).

Well, it was superb, loved every minute, cannot remeber much of the technical stuff now (If you don't use it, you'll lose it old adege), but I still maintain I have a pretty damn fine eye for picture composition / shot selection.

Best thing is, its still something my dad and I still have in common and can talk freely about (I live in Sweden now, and am not a particular great telephone speaker - too impersonal...).

Summary? ENJOY :clap:

//miceri

PS - As I was still a full time student, the course fee was zero, all I had to pay was 20p administration cost! (I guess for the stamp :smashin: )
 
Ive just enrolled to do a hnd at the local college. Just finished doing my degree in electronic media design so i thought Id do this on a part time basis to get a good grounding for the multimedia design business I hope to eventually set up....
 
Rayfin said:
Check out Park Lane College in Leeds - deffo some 'out of hours' part time photography courses.

Ray

If their courses are anything like their admin I'd stay clear. Emails get a read receipt but no reply and the course enquiry phone number goes to answerphone!

Why is it so hard to give people money!
 
h4rri said:
Just found the local version and entry requirement is the GCSE Photography course :(

That's a shame h4rri. They do a GCSE course at Sheffield but it isn't a requirement for the AS Level although it is recommended. When I enrolled I could talk to the photography tutor and he tried to persuade me to take the GCSE instead as they cover the basics about how an SLR works on the GCSE. I managed to persuade him that I know the basics so he let me on the AS course. Perhaps if you can talk to the tutor at your place you could do the same?

The AS course does have an entry standard of 5 GCSEs at C and above but no wanted to see proof that I had 5 GCSEs. Perhaps because I'm a mature student they don't bother with this - again perhaps this could work in your favour too h4rri??
 
Congrats on finding and enrolling on the course.

I got accepted in April on a photography course starting in September also in Sheffield, but at Norton centre, Its a 2 year 2 day per week full time course called Professional Photography. Details HERE

I picked this one mainly due to it being 95% prcatical with a high bias towards studio setup and use, with all formats of camera.

Mark
 
I've just become a 'student' again aswell :)

I've signed up for an evening course at Cambridge Regional College. Sadly there is no formal qualification at the end of it, but it is run by a practising photographer and over three terms will cover:

- The Studio – Lighting for portraits and for still life
- Location – Light on location, buildings, landscapes and people
- Post production – Photoshop and output systems for printing

I hope it will be fun and will improve my photography skills :)
 
I've been looking at courses too and had a prospectus from the Open University. They do a short course called 'Digital Photography: Creating and Sharing Better Images'

As i'm a newbie to the whole game and am still in the process of saving up for a dSLR I thought this might be good for me.

It doesn't start until next May and is only £155 so I should have a camera by then :thumbsup:

Visually focused, with text kept to a minimum, the course will develop your technical, visual, artistic and creative skills. The approach is very practical: a series on weekly hands-on assignments maximises your enjoyment as you progress through the course.

The details can be found here http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01T189

Clegg
 

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