HDR & RAW Photography Course. Learn how to take High Dynamic Range Photographs - email glen@digitalphotographycourses.co.uk

DSLR Photography - Using RAW & HDR

This is one of my favourite courses because I'm a great fan of shooting into the sun. I just love those long shadows and the fabulous cloud formations with the sunlight streaming through.

Up until the advent of RAW & HDR photography most of these pictures have tended to to suffer from dark foreground, which is great as I love the graphical shapes of a silhouette, but shooting in RAW and HDR has added a whole new dimension to this form of photography. A recent student just could not believe how creative this technique was and every second comments was "this is brilliant. I wish I had known about this before now."

Saddington Sheep

The Digital SLR plus RAW & HDR Photography course is usually run as a private tuition course or as a small groups of two or three students. It concentrates on landscape photography using the RAW file format & HDR techniques. These intensive photography & Photoshop courses are aimed at producing exhibition quality images for print or web use and are more suited to intermediate photographers.

As it's very photography and Photoshop intensive we can only run it with two or three students to order at a price of £175. Please email us here if you are interested in this RAW & HDR Photography course

The date of the next RAW and HDR Photography Course is on Saturday 20th November 2010. It's helpful if you have a laptop with some version of Photoshop installed but we do have spares.

Have you a laptop with Photoshop installed?
Please State Photoshop version
 

HDR Cracked Earth

What is HDR?

Photography plus HDRHDR stands for Higher Dynamic Range. The human eye is great at seeing a very wide contrast range but unfortunately digital cameras record a much more limited tonal range. HDR is a method of taking several images and combining them in Photoshop to give a much truer representation of what the eye actually sees. If you find the landscape images your camera takes don't actually look like what you think you saw then this is the best photography course for you. A tripod and a laptop PC with Photoshop installed would be very useful for this course but we do have spares if required.

RAW & HDR Course Outline

The course starts with an explanation of the difference between the JPG, RAW and HDR formats before going straight into a practical photography session to put the theory into practice. We'll spend about an hour taking photographs in the RAW format before loading the images onto a PC and adjusting them in Photoshop to see just how much detail is achievable. After lunch we'll travel to another location where you will be able to take another landscape photograph using the the techniques you learned in the morning. By this time you should be able to visualise the finished image before you actually take the shot.

HDR before

This picture shows the amount of detail achievable using normal photography techniques. Notice the complete lack of detail in the sky. This is because the our eye can see a much wider range of tones than the camera can record. This is one of the main reasons photographers are unhappy with their landscape pictures.

HDR after

This shot was taken using RAW & HDR photography method. Notice the huge amounts of extra detail in the sky while still keeping detail in the landscape. Because we have been able to record a much wider range of tones than before this image is actually a much more realistic recording of the picture we saw at the time we took it.

 

Gate HDR

Please Contact Us If You Have Any Questions


email - glen@digitalcameracourses.co.uk or call 0116 279 6906

Course Timings

 

9.30 -10am Arrival, coffee & biscuits 10.00am camera settings & theory

11am-12.30pm Photography session 1

12.30 -1.00pm light lunch (included)

1pm-2pm Practical Photoshop 1

2pm-3pm Photography session 2

3pm-5pm Practical Photoshop 2

5pm Questions & course feedback

 

DSLR Course Requirements

 

Digital SLR Camera

Extra lenses - optional

External flashgun - optional

Fully charged battery and/or a spare

Empty memory card

Any other kit you need explaining

change of shoes if wet.

 

Please ensure you have a fully charged battery as we will be using your camera a lot and batteries do to tend to run out. For batteries and cards at huge discounts visit

www.mymemory.co.uk

 

Royaly Free RAW File

 

Below you will find a royalty free sample RAW file and a corrected JPG you can download and have a play with. You are welcome to use these files or pass them on as you wish but please remember they are my copyright.If you do reproduce them please credit me as the photographer and link back to this web site.

 

RAW Sample Small

 

Download Instructions

 

To download these sample files using Internet Explorer please right click and choose "Save Target As" or in Firefox choose " Save Link As". You will need some form of RAW editor like Photoshop or the Camera RAW software that came with your camera.

 

Sample RAW file 11MB

Sample JPG - Corrected 2MB

 

Student Testimonials

I have attended several of Glen's courses and on every occasion I have found the sessions enjoyable and extremely informative.

I went on this HDR and RAW photography course with some trepidation, as I was concerned that it would be very technical, and be mostly about elaborate editing in Photoshop.

On both counts I was wrong. As usual Glen's calmly paced, easily understood tuition, followed by practicing the techniques, with a very useful review of the shots in their before and afterwards states.

In the most basic terms, I picked up invaluable tips on how to quickly improve the photos I've already taken. The terms "Bracketing"and "blending" sound very technical, but they are simple methods of accurately capturing the detail in a contrasting landscape shots (e.g. ground dark, sky light).

This training really helped with my understanding of the tonal range and contrast variations in a photograph , but more fundamentally, composition and the visualization of the finished picture before the shot was taken.

The session on RAW was excellent - this technique is simple, and relevant for those few 'special' landscape shots, that will benefit from some editing to bring out the contours of clouds, for example.

The editing in Photoshop was simple - the results from the session are images I would put on a wall!

I can't recommend this course highly enough, there really were some "eureka" moments, where all the knowledge I've picked up on Digital SLR photography all fell into place.

Marc Darling

Adobe UK - Special Offers 

Hi Glen,I just wanted to say thanks for the course, it was a great day, worth every penny. It's a great relief to now know that the expensive camera I have purchased and the new Nikon 18-200 zoom will be now be used correctly & hopefully I will be able to produce some fantastic picture in Borneo. I've recommended you to a lots of people, and I intend to see you for one of the wildlife courses in the future. Thanks again for superb day.

Craig Rogers

I just wanted to thank you again for the photography course today. I thought that it was going in way over my head but you made it seem so much easier. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will definitely be booking other courses. Excellent course full of useful information. I was thrilled with the amount I learned. Thank you.

Becky Holmes

Glen really tries hard to avoid the jargon and keep the instructions simple and understandable. His tuition focuses on getting the basic building blocks in place. He is definitely knowledgeable and he has certainly inspired me to practice my new skills and learn more. An excellent photography course.

David John