Courses in Ireland on Photography

311

I ran through the links thread and am baffled as to the courses available in ireland.

There must be people out there who know of places locally that are good.
Could there be a list ,stating night or full time .

Personally i'd like to do a course in Dublin ,at night or weekend.

Thanks in advance

Brian.

Jason_77

Hi Brian,

Check this course out.

http://www.digitalbeginners.ie/digitalphotocourses.htm

I was on this course last weekend and found it very good.

311

Jason_77 wrote:

Hi Brian,

Check this course out.

http://www.digitalbeginners.ie/digitalphotocourses.htm

I was on this course last weekend and found it very good.

Thanks a million ,looks good .
They seem to have different places ,one is close to me

Brian.

adrian522

Hi,

The photography centre in temple bar runs severeal courses. Check out their website at http://www.irish-photography.com/courses.html

I did an excellent course in Kilkenny some years back, but the ones above are all night courses in Dublin

311

adrian522 wrote:

Hi,

The photography centre in temple bar runs severeal courses. Check out their website at http://www.irish-photography.com/courses.html

I did an excellent course in Kilkenny some years back, but the ones above are all night courses in Dublin

Templebar was the first place i looked at ,courses are finished that i wanted.

Thanks for the reply.

heffsarmy

Those digital beginners courses look crap http://www.digitalbeginners.ie/digitalphotocourses.htm, the course modules consists of tips, would'nt waste 195euro on this, rather by some good books on photography than waste my money on this...you would learn more off a good website, such as http://photography-on-the.net/forum/ or http://www.dpreview.com/

digitalbeginner

Hi Heffs Army,

many thanks for your comments on our courses. You obviously know a lot about photography and are prepared to wade through hundreds of pages of technical information to get what you want.

Many people, however, are just too busy and find all the buzz words and technical detail just too much to bear. We boil it all down to make it easy for our students to understand what can be very difficult concepts.

You might have missed that we also we bring our students on 2 field trips where the photographs taken are critiqued when we get back to base. Students find this aspect extremely helpful. Last time I checked even the best of books can't tell you how good your own photographs are or where they might be improved.

i don't believe our courses are crap, nor do our students. We constantly get very positive feedback from attendees. To prove this point I would be happy to give you a discount on the next Improvers Weekend course in August just to show you high the quality of our training methods are. Please send an email to info@digitalbeginners.ie and I'd be happy to facilitate you in any way,

cheers

Dave McKane

ChityWest

If you dont mind me saying so that was beginning to sound an awful lot like an advert/shill for business there. I would agree that the course content as laid out there doesnt look too appealing.

I think one area most people (I know of) would be interested in for educational courses to cover is photoshop - a course on that could be worth paying for.

digitalbeginner

ChityWest wrote:

If you dont mind me saying so that was beginning to sound an awful lot like an advert/shill for business there. I would agree that the course content as laid out there doesnt look too appealing.

I think one area most people (I know of) would be interested in for educational courses to cover is photoshop - a course on that could be worth paying for.

Sorry if it sounded like an advert. I thought the Moderator said that negative comments should be kept to a minimum so I felt I had to defend our integrity from an uniformed comment that used very strong language.

Clearly those who use this forum are past the help that a beginners/improvers course can bring. That's ok, but just because people are at a more advanced stage is no reason to denigrate courses that you have no need for. Many people do have a need for a photography course in plain English.

As to the Photoshop course, that is something we are looking at. As a photographer/graphic designer I use Photoshop every day so could easily take my daily practices and turn them into a course. The problem is getting access to enough computers with the same version of photoshop on it. I'm not sure that a series of lectures on one computer is what people want. I'd be intested in your thoughts though.

elven

A more advanced photoshop course is something that a lot of people seem to be crying out for I think. It's something that I've gone looking for and found that they all seem to consist of the very basic 'transferring your images to the computer' and 'basic colour balance and contrast correction'. What I'd be interested in is a more in depth look at how to use the fundamental tools properly - usm, levels, curves, using RAW files, converting to BW - not just by desaturating. The problem is even the (2 day long) courses aimed at businesses that cover anything like this stuff cost E600! There's no way I could justify that, if it was just for my own personal gratification! As far as having so many computers with the same PS on them - if it was advanced there's a good chance people would have laptops, so you might not need to have so many. It'd be worth considering a 'bring your own' option. Then you might even be able to go for the demo from the website, at a push, if they didn't have ps of their own.

On the other topic... unfortunately the word 'crap' just seems to spill out of people's, um, fingers, far too often on these forums - in reference to photos as well as other stuff like this. It'd be a lot better for everyone involved if a level of tact and sheer consideration was employed when posting. I thought, surely we're all growed up enough to be able to phrase something in a way that doesn't sound like a huffy teenager? Some people just never seem to think it's worth the effort though I suppose.

Anyway, you're right about most people on here being beyond the 'this is a camera, this is how you take a picture' stage, but there's a good chance that the improvers' courses would have a benefit to some round here who are still pretty new to the whole thing, if even to pick up tips and re-cover the basics, with the advantage of a real live teacher to ask questions of. At the end of the day its your own call what you would be willing to spend your money on. I would suggest though, that the tone of your posts is friendly but it does smack of the salesman - and not just the one in reply to the other post. It makes people a bit wary - myself included... if you're a regular and you participate in the threads without shameless plugs every single post then it'll be a lot easier to take it all a bit more seriously.

Meh, I do ramble a lot these days.... I'm away for a bath.

digitalbeginner

Thanks. Points well made. I'll have a think about your Photoshop ideas. Unfortunately the more specific courses become the smaller the number of people available to take them, but there might be a happy medium. Watch this space!

FreeAnd..

On the photoshop course topic I would suggest that people are better off staying away from paying for any courses. Everything that is needed is on the web and some good practical tutorials can be found. These are way cheaper and the main thing with photoshop is to set aside time, pick a tool, find a tutorial and apply it to some pictures. Alot of time needs to be invested in this practice and no course can do this they can only introduce you to the tools (and give you some good tips but none that cant be found online). Saying this i am still at a basic enough level with PS but after paying nearly 200 bucks for the digital course in temple bar (which is a PS course and not a photogrpahy course) i learned nothing that i couldnt have done myself if i had set aside the hour or two at particular tools myself.

Saying that, the course was handy in making sure i set aside a couple of hours each week and the guy doing it was sound but i could have put that cash towards a much better use. Thats my conclusion on PS, everything s out there but it is a tool that needs time spent by the user rather than paying big bucks for a course. Why dont everyone here pick one tool, learn it off by heart and then give a run down to everyone else? including tips, uses and such stuff? Would not cost 600 bucks either...

elven

You are quite right about that, and I could well learn pretty much anything about anything from the internet, and books, given the time andpatience. But as you say, it's good for actually helping you set aside time to do it, and focusing your efforts - but also, I find that i learn so so so much more about anything if i have a real live person explaining it to me, showing me, and being able to ask them awkward questions I spent about 1/2 an hour with a bloke from a camera club back in Glasgow and learned more than I had picked up from tutorials over the course of 6 months.... but it isn't often you manage to corner someone with that kind of knowledge, knack for teaching, and patience for all the awkward questions

311

My problem is exactly what elven is talking about ,I have so many questions to ask but no one to ask.

Elven explained quite a bit to me about metering and grey scales ,stuff I knew nothing about and shed a lot of light on how the camera actually interperates the light that comes into the camera.

Anyways ,I think it's great that there are courses available and someday who knows people from here on boards might be the teachers.


Brian.

Fionn

i've lots and lots of stuff i don't know about too, but i think the most important thing is to keep shooting!! and keep an eye on forums and stuff, you pick up little gems of info to add to your knowledge. Lots of stuff go right over my head, but i'm managing somewhat anyway and i'm confident i'll pick it up as i go along, only recently i discovered i could change the focussing points on the camera :rolleyes: the only reason i did was because the extreme left one was the only active one and that was very annoying to take a proper shot. But thats the way i like to learn - making discoveries looking up things, i tend to retain it more than if someone sorta handed it all to me in one go. Sometimes if i cant grasp some concepts i'll leave them and move to something i can understand.
having said that the starters class is a great idea, lots of people would get benefits from it.
Another aspect of this is - time! how much you have to spare how much can you devote to photography, i know well from my few attempts at web design that it's a very time consuming business, i've a good deal of experience in desktop publishing and layout etc. and it took a long long time to learn and become proficient with for instance Corel Draw. What i think would happen in my own case with a full blown course in photoshop would be i'de forget most of it and that'd be money down the drain, even as it is i went to fix a windows 95 machine recently and was lost trying to navigate around it.
i'm rambling...i'll shut up now

peace

JMcL

I'd also recommend the so last millenium route of reading magazines, you can learn an awful lot about exposure, composition, Photoshop techniques etc.

In particular I'd recommend "Outdoor Photographer", I think it's a fantastic mag. Also "Practical Photography" is pretty good, and I buy the odd copy of "Amateur Photographer" (weekly) if there's something interesting in it.

John

heffsarmy

digital beginner the reason I labelled your course as being crap, is because the whole course seems to be made up of tips, theres no structure in the course, I would prefer to pay for a course which is more specific to an area in photography for instance 6 week course on portraiture, 6 week course on night photography rather than tips on each section. Anyway someone new to photography should get something out of it. I'll pass on your discount offer, thks though.
For those of you that are looking to improve your photoshop skills and learn about more about digital photography, I would recommend the link below, you can download a demo and it costs 44 dollars to buy. I found this an excellent reference.

http://www.123di.com/default.htm

311

JMcL wrote:

I'd also recommend the so last millenium route of reading magazines, you can learn an awful lot about exposure, composition, Photoshop techniques etc.

In particular I'd recommend "Outdoor Photographer", I think it's a fantastic mag. Also "Practical Photography" is pretty good, and I buy the odd copy of "Amateur Photographer" (weekly) if there's something interesting in it.

John

I've been buying them alright ,not regularly though.
I don't like all the adds in them ,gets boring passing by advertisements.

I do like the black and white photography magazine, they seem to write pages on each photographer rather than a couple of paragraphs.

brian

JMcL

_Brian_ wrote:

I don't like all the adds in them ,gets boring passing by advertisements.

There is that, though on the plus side you can just turn the page as opposed to fighting a constant battle with Adblock to prevent stuff dancing all over your monitor

John

johnny b

id say keep your 200euro's or whatever it costs for these courses and buy some good books with the money. read them, put them back on the shelf, read them again, study them, put them back on the shelf.......then there always there to pick up again for reminders/moving forward with techniques. you'll have to pay again for another course for reminders / updates, unless you write your the whole experience out verbatim, and that aint much good cos it means you werent listening.:p

for technical stuff id go for 'Photography-london,upton,stone,kobre,brill-8th edition' and for photoshop get 'martin evenings photoshop cs or cs2 for photographers'. these are two books iv gotten for college, and wouldnt / couldnt do without them.

plus - dont burn yourself out with technical jargin - take your time...............slowly,slowly catchy monkey

digitalbeginner

Hi Johnny,

you're absolutely right! We should read as much as we can, and then try it out. We should even read the manual, it's usually got great tips as well as info on what the various settings can do.

We should also walk half an hour each day, cut down on alcohol, stay out of the sun, eat more bran, go to bed early etc, etc. I'm not being smart, but it seems that the members of this forum are a rare bunch. They read!

Most people don't. They want the condensed version. Why? Because they're busy, their child is sick, they're behind in work, they have to spend time with family (or they might not have one for long). Married people particularly are very short on time and are worn out by the time they get home. The thoughts of tucking in a large, technical tome is not even in the frame!

By all means read. But don't denigrate those who seek to make the process less painful. There's room for both.

311

I want to do a course ,but this is getting a bit long in the tooth now at this stage ,there is only so many lines on my screen.

johnny b

digitalbeginner wrote:

By all means read. But don't denigrate those who seek to make the process less painful. There's room for both.

of course there is, but this will determine your level. imagine digital never existed, and we were still in the film age. plenty of people managed with just that. no matter how advanced an art / creative medium has become ya always gotta go back to basics to learn.

i learnt with film (as many others have), and i couldnt imagine myself trying now to learn straight into digital. its all too much to take in with camera settings and photoshops and the likes. even if you dont intend on using film, learn from an old / non-digital book. its not old news. nothings changed with the principles today. all these modern cameras are all based on a very simple and old mechanism and all apply principles which have not changed since photographys dawn.

if your looking for a less painful way to learn, chances are you wont learn anything. and if you do, you probably havent learnt it correctly

thorme

johnny b wrote:

...i learnt with film (as many others have), and i couldnt imagine myself trying now to learn straight into digital. its all too much to take in with camera settings and photoshops and the likes...

Those starting photography for the first time now have a huge advantage over those who learned with film. Digital imaging has made the whole learning process quicker and easier. Like you, I leraned with film too and there was far more to take in back then than there is with digital - it's just that as we get older our ability to retain new information reduces so it seems like it's all too much to take in. But think of all the technical elements you had to learn with film - reciprocity characteristics, colour balancing filters, exposure indices, developer formulae, time and temperature graphs, push and pull processing, exposure latitude, zone system, guide numbers, etc., etc.

It's no coincidence that the sale of digital SLR's is starting to outpace the sale of all other cameras, digital compacts included! Most people these days are computer literate and it makes the whole process so much easier. Courses such as the digitalbeginner courses referred to above are ideal for the ordinary punter who has no interest in getting to grips with PS but who wants to maximise the potential of their camera whilst minimising the amount of time spent doing so. At the end of the day it comes down to horses for courses (pardon the pun!).

311

For anyone thinking of doing a course ,go ahead and do it.
Longer you put it off ,the less you'll benefit from it.

Backtoblack

Elven, FAS do a course on Photoshop.. I'm not sure how advanced it is exactly but here's a link, if you go to the modules it goes through the course.
http://www.fas-netcollege.com/html/courses/courseDetail.php?detailId=55&catId=3#

leinsterman

I paid €1,250 for the NUI cert course which is 2 nights a week at NCAD this year ... I had to drop out because my work and personal life got way too busy ... but I have to say I was less than impressed ... some of this may have been down to the fact that I did not warm to the main tutor ... I found her very abrasive and not very good at teaching ...

On the plus side -

...the course was good for giving you reasons to get out with the camera and shoot some stuff ... and also for meeting others who like to do the same ...

... I also liked the imaging culture / history module which was good for inspiration and getting the creative juices flowing ...

... the other good part was learing how to develop film (which I was not into initially, being digital oriented... but when you get that Eureka moment of having your first picture appear in front of you in the developer it really is quite special)

... and also learning how to use a studio was good ...

... the college has a nice vibe and would make a good day out for the boards gang on a photoshoot ...

...the negatives -

The main tutor was clueless about digital (she was trying to teach us digital and CS2 but could not ... most of the students got very peeved about this) ... The course is very poor on digital ... forget it if this is what you need (the prospectus talks it up but in practice it is not at all covered) ...

... The college facilites are not the best ... but they are manageble as Fajitas! will point out ...

The main tutor knows a bit about film development but she can't teach it to save her life ... I ended up learning most of the techniques from another sutdent ...

The course lacks any structure at all ... they appear to be making it up as they go along ... which may be due to the fact that this is the first year ...


I estimate that to get the most form the course (which is 6 hours class / studio / lab time per week) you would need put in a total of 18 hours a week ... In my case this did not work out ... and you cannot access the facilities outside of class times ... which are shared with 10 others ... and there is not enough enlargers so invariably you sepnd a lot of valuable class time hanging around chatting ... the same is the case for the studio and even some of the theory classes ... the lecturers come in half prepared most of the time ...

All in all it was a lot of money for very limited return in my opinion ... I would not recommend it to others in its current form ... but maybe they will learn from their mistakes for the second year.