Kent Weakley Course Review

My resolve about not taking more classes vanished in an instant when I saw that Kent Weakley was offering his night photography class this month. I’ve wanted to take this class since I first read about it last November. I think I can count on one hand the night shots I’ve taken that worked out well. But as much as I wanted to take the class then, I knew I was unlikely to venture out in the cold at night. Now the weather is perfect for night photography and Kent’s class begins tomorrow. Earlier this spring I took Kent’s e-class on composition, so now I am even more excited about this new class.

Kent’s classes work a bit differently than other online photography classes I’ve taken. Rather than getting a new lesson once or twice a week, you get access to all the lessons and galleries when the class begins. For the night photography class, there are 15 lessons and student galleries in the course, and you have 60 days to go over the material, get your shots, and post in the galleries for comments. The course material is presented so you can copy and paste the lessons into a document and refer back to it, even after the class is completed. I read and reread the lessons in the composition class, looked at the photos in the student gallery and learned even more by reading Kent’s comments about the student photos. There’s a good video and description of the Night Photography class here.

I’ve done a lot of reading about composition so there wasn’t a lot of brand new material in Kent’s composition class, but it was presented in a way that helped me internalize the principles of composition. I got lots of time to practice on our recent road trip. Despite the fact that I wasn’t feeling all that great, every time I picked up the camera I automatically started thinking about composition. There are a lot more photos from this trip that need no cropping, and to my mind, are well-composed. Kent repeatedly reminded us that we are responsible for everything in the photo! If you see something you don’t like, don’t just take the shot and hope to photoshop it later, do something about it in the field. I found that almost every time, I could improve the composition before I took the photo. The other noticeable improvement I’ve seen is in the responses I get from the photo critique I attend once a month at a local photography gallery. I’m also better able to look at others’ photos and see the compositional elements that make a photo great. Kent’s blog is a gold mind, too, if you’re looking for great advice on a wide variety of photographic topics. His short, concise videos are winners!

A couple of my favorite photos from the trip were posted here, but I’ll leave you with a couple others I like as well.

The Pacific Coast

Denver Botanic Gardens

The Pacific from the Hearst Castle