The Best Free Online Photography Courses and Tutorials
Given my interest in lifelong learning and skill-development, I often ask people which new skills they’re looking to learn. The most common response? “I want to be a better photographer”.
And for good reason! Few things evoke the instant emotional response a great photo does. It’s what made Instagram worth a billion dollars to Facebook.
For those of you who, like me, are looking to kick their photography skills up a notch, I’m curating a list of the best free online courses and resources I’ve found. So whether you’re a budding photojournalist looking toward a career behind the lens, or just a hobbyist looking to take better shots on your next trip, I’m hoping you’ll find something useful here!
I realize that this is by no means an exhaustive list, rather it’s a work in progress. If you know of other awesome free resources, share them in the comments and I’ll add the best ones to the list.
Photography for Beginners
1. Introduction to Photography and Related Media: Video lectures from a semester-long undergraduate-level course at MIT. Covers the fundamentals of analog and digital SLR, film exposure and development, darkroom techniques, digital imaging, and studio lighting.
Level: Beginner | Duration: Self-paced | Always Available
2. Basics of Photography: The Complete Guide: A comprehensive resource for beginning photographers, compiled by the friendly folks at Lifehacker. Starts by explaining how a digital camera works and goes on to explain image composition, technique, and editing. Mostly in text format, interspersed with a few explanatory videos.
Level: Beginner | Duration: Self-paced | Always Available
3. Free Beginner Nikon Digital SLR Photography: This highly-rated course teaches you how to use all the buttons and dials on your camera (e.g. exposure, aperture, shutter speed and the mode dial) by doing rather than memorizing.
Level: Beginner | Duration: 2.5 hours | Always Available
4. Photography: Ditch Auto – Start Shooting in Manual: As the name suggests, a course for amateur photographers who have been using their DSLR or fancy Point-and-shoot camera in “auto” mode, but want to learn to unlock to it’s full potential.
Level: Beginner | Duration: 4.5 hours | Always Available
5. Karl Taylor’s FREE Photography Course: Among the most popular courses on Udemy (almost 50,000 students enrolled, hundreds of rave reviews). Instructor Karl teaches using a mix of videos and PDF fact sheets. In his words, all you need is “a camera and some enthusiasm”.
Level: Beginner | Duration: 2.5 hours | Always Available
6. A Complete Introduction to Photography (aka Reddit Photoclass): Reddit never ceases to amaze me! Alexandre Buisse taught this 30-part class to 7,000 Redditors a few years ago. Now archived on his website, this gem covers everything from gear to post processing. Great for those who prefer reading to watching videos.
Level: Beginner to Intermediate | Duration: Self-paced | Always Available
7. Strobist: Perhaps the most popular resource for beginners to learn how to use light and their flashes, especially their Lighting 101 course that many photographers swear by.
Level: Beginner to Intermediate | Duration: Self-paced | Always Available
8. Cambridge in Colour: A great site for beginners to browse tutorials and have their questions answered by a community of learners. And no, that extra “u” in “Colour” is not a typo — this is Cambridge, UK we’re talking about!
Level: Beginner | Duration: Self-paced | Always Available
Post-production and Specific Techniques
9. Using a Photographic Light Meter: A course for photographers who have just started using a hand-held light meter to determine exposure.
Level: Beginner | Duration: 2 hours | Always Available
10. Pixels After Dark: Shooting the Night: An outstanding talk by three-time Olympic photographer Jeff Cable on shooting images at night.
Level: Intermediate | Duration: 1.5 hours | Always Available
11. Getting Started with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5: A detailed series of video-lectures from Adobe on how to effectively use their Lightroom software to do everything from importing images to adding special effects and printing. The Adobe TV website has plenty of more great “how-to” resources for photographers.
Level: Beginner | Duration: 3.5 hours | Always Available
12. Photoshop & Lightroom for Photographers: You’ve learned to use your camera and compose great pictures. Now make them look better! This highly-rated course teaches the two most popular software tools used by photographers to process and touch up images.
Level: Intermediate | Duration: 6.5 hours | Always Available
13. Create a Gorgeous Photography Site with SmugMug in 90 mins: Now that you have some great-looking pictures, use this course to set up a website to showcase them!
Level: Beginner | Duration: 1.5 hours | Always Available
14. Computational Photography: This Georgia Tech course talks about how computation affects various aspects of photography — from photo-editing to sharing. Knowledge of college-level mathematics, general physics and basic computer programming are recommended for this course.
Level: Intermediate | Duration: 4 weeks | Next Start Date: To Be Announced
15. Phlearn: All about Photoshop. This site has short explanatory videos on how to do specific things in Photoshop (e.g. watermark your images, remove tan lines). They have 450 free videos, and release 5 new episodes each week.
Level: Intermediate | Duration: Self-paced | Always Available
16. Anthony Morganti’s Video Series on Lightroom 5: This 40-part video series covers everything you need to know about Lightroom 5 — starting with the very basics, and going on to cover advanced topics.
Level: Beginner to Intermediate | Duration: 12 hours | Always Available
17. An Introduction To Tilt + Shift Photography: A detailed (and very popular) guide by Peter Hill on what the “Tilt + Shift” effect actually is, and how to achieve it.
Level: Advanced | Duration: Self-paced | Always Available
Photography in Society and as Art
18. The Art of Photography: This course from Australia’s RMIT University covers both the academic and practical aspects of photography. Instructor Dr. Shane Hulbert, an artist-academic whose work has been shown in Victoria’s National Gallery, covers photography as a visual art practice, explores the work of contemporary photographers, and introduces the idea of a “digital darkroom”.
Level: Beginner | Duration: 4 weeks |
19. Documentary Photography and Photojournalism: Still Images of a World in Motion: Want to be the next Steve McCurry? This MIT course for budding photojournalists course requires some prior background in photography, e.g. knowing the difference between f stops and T stops, and being able to find one’s way around a camera.
Level: Intermediate | Duration: 4 weeks | Always Available
20. Photography and Truth: This course from MIT’s Anthropology department studies photography as a medium of expression and its interactions with politics, economics, and social life.
Level: Intermediate | Duration: Self-paced | Always Available
21. History of Photography Podcasts: An archive of 15 weekly podcasts by Jeff Curto from his course at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. The podcast is accompanied with a video slide show of the photos in discussion.
Level: Beginner | Duration: 4 weeks | Always Available
Reference Resources and Advanced Materials
22. Digital Photography School: Very popular (360k Facebook likes!) free resource with lots of useful information, articles and tips. Especially bookmark-worthy is their page – Tips and Tutorials for Beginners.
23. Creative Live Photography: They live-broadcast a handful of free online courses each month. They also have a large library of pre-recorded courses, but these are usually expensive.
24. Tuts Plus Photography Tutorials: Hundreds of helpful articles and tutorials on pretty much any photography topic you want to learn about.
25. Lynda.com Photography Courses: Since it’s a paid resource ($25 monthly subscription), I wasn’t sure whether I should include Lynda.com in this list, but my professional photographer friends swear by their advanced tutorials. In any case, you could try them out via this free 7-day trial.
Since you’ve made it this far, you deserve an inspiring video! Check out this fascinating TED Talk by Swedish photographer & retouch artist Erik Johansson who creates “realistic photos of impossible scenes” by combining dissimilar photographs!
(Via Petapixel)
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