Welcome!
Hi, and welcome to the Foundations of Photography Course!
Allow me to introduce myself. I am James Staddon and I hail from wild, wonderful West Virginia. I’ve loved photography from before I was 12 years old when my parents bought me a brand new Minolta film point-and-shoot camera for Christmas. It wasn’t until I was 18 that I actually switched from film to digital when I bought my very first DSLR camera, a Canon EOS 20D. Since then I’ve upgraded a few times, but never to the latest and greatest; I like to live simply and within a budget.
As a Christian, I like to call myself a “creation photographer” because I love to shoot the beauty of the too-complex-to-have-evolved landscape and wildlife that God has surrounded us with. Besides photography, I love graphic design, traveling, hiking, reading, playing ultimate Frisbee and doing just about anything outdoors. But enough about myself!
With this first lesson, let me give you some perspective, background and what you can expect to discover in this course.
Are you Starting at the Right Place?
I assume you are going through this Course as part of the Lenspiration Photography Program. If so, forward ho!
If you are not currently working through the Lenspiration Photography Program, then I highly suggest you stop and check it out here before continuing on. It is designed to lead you through your photography journey step-by-step, with extra material and on a structured schedule. I highly suggest you start there. The workbooks for the Photography Program are free to download, and it will eventually bring you back to this point.
The best place to start a marathon is at the starting line. 🙂
More than Information
The value of this course does not lie in information alone. Its value is found in organized information: information laid out step by step, starting from the very beginning and building a foundation for learning more in the future. And it’s information organized progressively. Just think about it. All the information you would ever want to know about photography is out there on the Internet. Why have you not already learned it all? Because it’s not presented in a logical sequence for beginners! It’s comprehensive, but it’s absolutely uncharted.
And that’s why I put together things like this course. To help beginners learn photography from the ground up, step by step, in a way that I wish it had been presented to me when I was just getting started!
You might say that the difference between the Internet and this course is like the difference between the ocean and an aquarium. The ocean is vast, but the aquarium is concentrated. The ocean contains everything but the aquarium will let you learn so much more in the same amount of time you would have spent on a dive in the ocean.
This course is just a drop in the bucket, but it’s the one drop that contains everything you need to know to get started in your explorations into the depths of photography!
Writing from Experience
Because you can already find pretty much anything you want on the Internet, I didn’t try to make this course comprehensive. I created it to be sequential and practical. It is arranged from personal experience too. What did I wish I had known when I was first learning photography? What would have made concepts easier for me to understand? These are the questions I asked myself as I put this course together. I created it to help someone go from knowing practically nothing about photography to having a foundation of knowledge that will enable them to start and continue growing for the rest of their life.
And because it’s written from practical experience, there will be biases on at least two levels:
- Have you figured out yet that I am a Canon user? Hence you can be sure that I’ll be using mostly Canon lingo. But I have done my best to speak in terms of principles so it shouldn’t be a big deal in understanding what I’m talking about. Plus, I have tried to include terms from other manufacturers when necessary. You can always go to Google to find what I’m talking about in the context of your camera brand.
- It is also worth mentioning that I am a PC user, not a Mac guru. I used Mac for many years as a graphic designer and still unwittingly say “Command” when I’m talking about the PC’s “Control” key. However, I won’t be talking computer language much in this course, so it really shouldn’t matter that much. Just felt I should give you a heads up.
And it would be worth mentioning too that, in the presence of questions or uncertainties, feel free to ask on the Lenspiration forums!
- The Photography Q&A forum is the place to ask random photography questions.
- The Photo Critique forum is where you can post the pictures you take for some of the lesson assignments.
When you’re logged in, you can access any of these forums via the main menu.
Less Text, More Links
This course has dozens of Lessons divided up into 5 Sections. This might seem like a daunting amount. But don’t worry. Take it one lesson at a time. I have done my best to write things in a way that is fun and easy to understand. If you start to feel overwhelmed, just slow down. This course is online so you can take it at your own pace. Photography is a vast subject, and you could spend your whole life learning and implementing everything there is to know. But rest assured that pros never become pro overnight.
On the other side of the coin, I have added plenty of links to other websites that explain things in greater depth than I do. I’m all for learning from those who explain various topics better than I ever could.
External links also help you see outside of the James Staddon perspective. Reaching beyond this course will certainly give you a glimpse of how much there really is to learn out there!
Wholesomeness Policy
In links I recommend, I’ve done my best to hold to my personal “Wholesomeness Policy”. My purpose is to glorify God in everything I share, so I have kept this in mind when choosing the links I recommend, linking you to other websites on the Internet.
However, it’s very important that I credit the sites where I have gathered specific information from, so if there was a source that presented imagery or language that I deemed inappropriate, I have added an asterisk (*) next to the link.
And if you happen to come across anything you feel is inappropriate via any of the links I recommend, don’t hesitate to let me know on the forums or the Contact page.
Removing Annoying Stuff
Though I have only linked to websites that I feel provide wholesome content, I can never know what the ever-changing ads will be like surrounding that content. So, how do you take care of those annoying ads?
For me personally, I just about always use the Google Chrome browser with an amazing little extension called Ad Block Plus. I can’t begin to tell you how helpful this has been! I don’t like to go on the Internet without it.
I highly suggest you install it right away! It was installed on my browser as I was doing my research for this course so having it installed on your browser is really the only way that you can also expect a safe experience as you follow the links in this course. The same extension is also available for the Firefox browser.
Comparisons for Examples
In the examples that I provide, I’ve tried to give comparisons. So often in my own personal research, I’ll see great examples of how a concept is applied, but I’m left clueless as to how that concept can be applied to my own awful-looking pictures. For me, comparisons are key. When I see a “bad” example transformed into a “good” example, that’s how I see how that concept can be applied to my own pictures.
Comparisons act as a sort of bridge. I wish there were more comparison examples in the photography education that I have experienced in the past, so I’ve done my best to provide as many as I could for you here.
SOP of Assignments
You are free to view any lesson from the entire course at any time. However, there are reasons why I arranged the lessons in the order that I did. Therefore, I suggest you go through them sequentially.
At the end of most lessons, I have provided suggested assignments. These assignments are not required, but will greatly enhance your understanding of the concepts discussed in the lesson. It’s the best way to get hands-on experience and keep knowledge from crystallizing into intellectual capital.
I suggest approaching lesson assignments in an “SOP” sequence:
- Shoot. Assignments provide practical things you can do to gain hands-on experience. They help you and see and feel the concepts we talk about actually being put into practice.
- Observe. Assignments aren’t meant to be rote tasks. They are opportunities to test and see if what I said actually works! You don’t have to believe stuff just because I said it. Observe how your pictures are turning out and see if they are actually turning out like I said they would or should in the course.
- Post. Assignments give you the opportunity to learn through personal interaction with others too. When you complete an assignment, the forums are specifically set up for you to show your work, receive critique, prove a point, or ask input from me as well as anyone else who on Lenspiration. Posting the pictures you take and the questions you bump into during the course is essential! Take advantage of the forums – especially those of you who are in the Lenspiration Membership.
I wholeheartedly recommend utilizing the assignments to help you shoot, observe and post what you are learning. Hopefully, it will become standard operating procedure for the rest of your photography career.
Completion Requirements and Rewards
At the end of every lesson is a quiz. To complete any lesson, you must have a passing quiz score of 75% or higher. The quizzes are required to complete the course. They are composed of multiple choice, gap fill and true/false questions.
If you read and understand the content presented in each lesson, the quizzes will be easy. And if you don’t pass the quiz, then you can re-digest the lesson to find the answers and take the quiz again. The quizzes are simply there to help you remember the content so future lessons will be easier to understand.
If you feel there is a lesson that covers content you already know, then feel free to take the quiz first, without reading the lesson, to see how you do. This might be a good exercise for intermediate to advanced photographers.
Anyone who completes this course is eligible for a reward: 50% off 3 months of Lenspiration membership! On the certificate that is presented to you at the end of the course, you will find a link to claim your reward. That link is there for just one special person . . . you . . . and cannot be shared with other individuals.
So! There’s the basic rundown of what you can expect during this course!
And now, in conclusion, there is one very important item of introduction:
4 Important Things to Remember
It wouldn’t matter whether you researched photography every day of your life or became the greatest, most famous photographer ever . . . if you failed to remember these 4 foundational, dumbfoundingly-simple things. Every bit of that knowledge, effort, blood, sweat, and tears would all be for naught if these are forgotten. And what are these 4 things?
- Love God with all your heart while you’re taking pictures
- Love God with all your heart in what you take pictures of
- Love God with all your heart in what you express in your pictures
- Love God with all your heart in how you present your pictures
If you are a Christian, you have probably heard a million times to “love God with all of your heart.” But what does that mean as a photographer practically? How can I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength if I’m not doing it while I’m doing photography?
Imagine if every photographer in the world would only remember these 4 things! There would be no shoving at iconic overlooks. No anger-induced equipment damage. No immoral advertising. No pornography industry. No “place dropping” in conversation. No dishonesty in photojournalism. The list is endless!
I would agree I’m being foolishly idealistic. As long as sin exists, a perfect world like this will never exist. But it can exist to an extent in your world. As each and every one of us meditate continually on the teachings that Christ gave to us, as applied to every aspect of life, I think we would be surprised at the difference it would make in how we would take pictures, what we would take pictures of, what we would express in our pictures, and how we would present our pictures to others.
I could write a whole book on this. But for now, I challenge you to think through these 4 things and see if it makes any difference in your photography.
Assignment: The Secret Slip of Paper |
Ok! So here is your first assignment….
On a secret slip of paper, write down the answers to the following 5 questions. Think hard! These questions are not meant to be easy. And don’t worry; this is classified information that I won’t share with anybody. Confidential. I promise!
Once you’ve scribbled down an answer to each one of these questions, take that paper and hide it away someplace secret. You can modify it if you want, but by all means, keep it under wraps until the very, very last lesson! |
Ok? Go for it. I’ll wait for you. And when you’re finished, you can get started on the next lesson!
. . . after the quiz, of course. “What? A quiz on the Introduction?!”
Well, figured I had to introduce the quizzes somehow!