How About an Online Photography Class?

The challenge for last week in my online photography class was to use Photoshop to make a panorama.  The above photo was my submission, a panorama made from three photographs taken from Mt. Sanitas in Boulder looking east towards the plains.  If you turn around and look to the west, you see the Rockies.  Boulder itself isn't in the mountains, but sits right in front of them, part of the series of towns and cities which make up the "Front Range."

My class is a year long and we have only seven more weeks until the end.  The teacher, Ricky Tims, has announced a new class for next year under a new name, "Photoclass For You!"

You can check out the web site here.  One change from this year is that instead of signing up for a full year, Ricky has divided the 2016 class into three parts and you can take one or all the parts.  Another change is that the class is more expensive than last year.  But the basic goals and format are the same; a new lesson each week along with a new challenge, teaching either students a Photoshop technique, basic design, or use of a DLSR camera.

To give you some idea of what you might do, here's some photos I took for recent challenges.

Week 37, Selective Color

Week 33, Found Alphabet

Week 41, Decay

I'm glad I took the class this year and I'm also glad the year is about up.  Fifty-two weeks is a long time to sustain interest in a class which requires a product every week, and I think Ricky is on the right track to break it up into smaller parts.   And while I met my goal of learning the basics of using Ben's very good Nikon camera and acquiring a basic knowledge of Photoshop, I've also learned that at heart I am a "point and shoot" type of person.  I'd much rather take a quick shot to capture a moment than set up a shot to match a preconceived idea.  I would like to learn more about Photoshop and may look around for a class to pursue that.

This week the class challenge is to experiment with something in Photoshop that we haven't learned to do.   Should be interesting.  In just a few minutes of experimenting I found two cool filters to apply to this image I found in Google. 

Here it is with "trace contour" applied to it.   Could be useful if you wanted to turn it into a fabric appliqué or a coloring page.

And here it is with "pointillize" applied.  

Should be a fun week!