Places to learn photography from basics to advance techniques

If I remember well I started to learn photography online three years ago. There are many places right now where you can learn anything about photography from basic courses "how to operate your camera" to really advanced techniques with strobes, lights, studio, outdoor you name it.

For someone who has just bought a camera, it could be pretty confusing, therefore a lot of people start with workshops, books, private lessons etc. Don't get me wrong, all of these methods work. However, in today's Internet age, there are plenty of places where you get the education for free or for a really small fee.

Let me share with you my sources that I have gathered over the years, and I hope it will help you learn something new. Let me start with the traditional ones.



1. Workshops

When I bought my first camera, I also received a voucher for first Canon photography school lesson in our town. A known local photographer (sorry I don't remember the name ;) was presenting his work and explaining why he picked the photographs and what is the story behind them. That was great, you start to get the idea about the story, composition etc. But not so much about technical stuff. So If you get the chance, go for it, you will meet interesting people keen on photography, and if it is for free, that's like a bonus. Just search in google for your town + photography workshop. Nevertheless, this is not the area I was going to talk about. (For Czech people, you can find some here :  +Megapixel (workshops), FotoSkoda, Idif ...)

2. Books

After that, I started looking for some books. I don't remember how exactly I got to this one, but I think my wife told me that it is a well written and easy to understand book. I bought +Scott Kelby 's Digital Photography book 1, Scott has one of the most amazing and most simple ways to teach. You can find it on Peachpit or in Czech language here. As he says himself, the books are not full of theory and technical terms, what he does is that he basically answers questions as though you were standing next to him and asking him, such as: "Hey, how do I get this flower to be in focus, with the background out of focus?". I can highly recommend these for start. But now, let's focus on the biggest media where I learned most of the stuff, which is the Internet



3. INTERNET

If you start searching google or youtube for photo basics, you will get tons of links. It is hard to find the best ones. Here are some that worked great for me, and where I daily look for inspiration and hints.

Youtube channels

• DigitalRev TV - if you like humorous reviews and photo tips, this is the right channel. +Kai Man Wong is not just presenting products, but he does some very simple and interesting photography experiments. This will open your mind how easy it could be to take very interesting shots. Love it :) Find them on g+ under +DigitalRev 

• Adorama is one of the biggest photo stores in the US, but not only that, they also have a lot of photo tips with +Joe McNally , +Mark Wallace , +Gavin Hoey , +Tamara Lackey and other great photographers. Lots of videos are featuring products from +Adorama, but don't get too confused or hooked here, these are not mandatory :)

• Kelby media group - plenty of videos from +Scott Kelby , +Matt Kloskowski and others. This also includes one of the best videos I have ever seen, which answered my main question about the really great photos "How do they do it? Do the top photographers just see a great picture and take it?" Just check out Scott Kelby's Crush the Composition and you will find the answer.

• Phlearn - behind this strange name you will find +Aaron Nace and plenty of tutorials to enhance your photographs in Photoshop. +Phlearn .com is not only about Photoshop, you will find a lot of behind the scenes videos, photography tips etc.

Paid learning

To be honest I watch only 2 sources that are paid, and frankly there are so many videos and courses that it is hard to keep up.

• KelbyOne - delivered by Scott and his media group. This is a huge source. Do you wanna become a sports, portrait, fashion, food or landscape photographer? Or do you just wanna know how to operate your camera? You just need to pay $25 / month and you can have it all from the world best photographers. +KelbyOne rocks!

• CreativeLive - founded by +Chase Jarvis has a little bit different format. You can watch any course that is live for free. After the course is over, you can buy it. So it is good to subscribe to the newsletter and watch it live or afterwards in rebroadcast still for free. +CreativeLive focuses mainly on photography, but there are also other courses on Music&audio, business&money etc.

Learn the tools 

Tools like Photoshop or Lightroom are a necessary part of any great photographs. But those are only tools, they will not make the photo, they will help to enhance it and transfer the artists' idea to reality. So it is good to know them

• Adobe TV is a great place to start with Photoshop or Lightroom, +Julieanne Kost is an adobe evangelists and a great teacher, you can find her videos here.

• Lynda.com is also a great place to learn, as I understood they have also moved to subscription $25/month, + you can find their videos on AdobeTV as well. I don't use them too often now but I did in the past.

Follow social media

If you are lucky and you already know what exactly you wanna shoot, just follow the best people in that area on google+, twitter, flickr, facebook etc. Social media is the key for inspiration and quick tips. You can google articles like this 60 Google+ Photographers to Inspire You or Top 104 Amazing Photographers to Circle on Google+ or this 2,500 Kick Ass Photographers on Google+ and you will get plenty of inspiration.
Definitely don't miss people like +Joe McNally, +Jay Patel, +Peter Hurley, +Chase Jarvis, +Alan Shapiro, +Thomas Hawk, +Takahiro Yamamoto, +Jessica Ambats, +Lindsay Adler, +Sue Bryce  and many more.


So here you have it. I might have covered about 0,01% of material available but this was my way to learn photography, and believe me ... I'm still at the beginning. Photography is great, there are so many areas to improve your skills, that you will never stop learning, and I really mean never ever.

Although learning is important, shooting is even more. You will never improve just by listening to courses and watching more videos, you need to practice, practice, practice.

And remember what Alfred Stieglitz said: “Wherever there is light, one can photograph.”

If you have any interesting sources, please leave a comment. Sharing is caring, thank you ;)