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Camera Images has been for  number of years the leading 1 to 1 training provider for people with Nikon cameras, with clients coming from around the world. In this time we have trained many clients, and some of these we have seen a number of times. Some clients  including those coming from overseas spend a number of days with us, bundling up the courses they undertake to get it within a week or less. We also run more advanced courses both tailored to individuals need and also very focused masterclasses.

Our courses break into 4 groups

Introductory courses, Wide topic courses covering large amount in a day

Tailored 1:1, often chosen by returning clients to put together training days that expend their knowledge while at the same time going over ground they have experienced problems with.

Masterclasses, far more focused courses often with special, arrangements, often very practical courses. You need to have a very good understanding of photography generally before doing one of our masterclasses.

VIP Plus, these are practical expeditions with training and support, can be a day in the UK or a period in most places in the world, we have a number of defined options for a specials VIP plus course where we take you to Ghana in West Africa, and give you a fantastic experience you will never forget, you get great photos, and lean in a very short time a great deal.

If you have looked at our website before, you will see out pricing structure has recently changed, making introductory course now far cheaper. what we have done is to make the course fee better fit the amount of work involved in putting them on, so introduction course we can run with little advance preparation while with the tailored 1:1 we have to do quite a lot of planning ahead, and with masterclasses often make special arrangements well beyond this, incurring extra cost and needing needing support people.

The training you need

Anyone can take snaps with a camera, and if people take enough just by sheer mathematical probability some will be technically about right, and of course modern equipemnt helps in some respects makes this in some circumstances more likely. These features however will often work against you as well as with you. Similarly artistic opportunities will arise. Take enough photos and without any training some will be  good. Many amateur photographers have a small number of exhibition photos, but where the professional or photographer with a higher competence level stands out is that they routinely have technically good images, and an understanding of what to do to improve the chance of other images being better.

Add the ability to control light, not with divine help, but using reflectors, flash, lighting etc, and you start to control as oppose to react to situations.

Reading books, instruction manuals, magazines, watching videos, exhibition presentations, group courses, and other actions that you are out of the loop can help to a very limited degree. If however you put yourself into a training situation where you are a part of the loop, what you understand is monitored, where you can ask questions, try out things that are being told to you on a camera in your hands and get help with making the results you are getting meaningful to you, you can make real progress. Where the full focus is not on getting to the end of a scripted presentation by the end of time limited session and then having a few questions,, but by understating each part, completely and mastering aspects that you hear about for the first time as well as correcting information you have got wrong from other souses and methods

With all of our training , we teach one to one and make sure you understand each item before moving on to the next. We only train on a 1 to 1 basis so you get the total attention of the tutor. This way you cover many times as much as you would on a group course, and we frequently get people coming to learn with us, and achieving it successfully who have spent previously a lot of time and money on group courses without gaining any real understanding. Photography is an art, but its also a very practical subject you need the camera in your hands and to be able to ask questions as you proceed, and to make sure you understand each part before using this knowledge as a building block that further information is built on.

We recognise out training is not cheap and will often cost you more than attending a group event, however you will just about always improve your photography far more by spending a day with us than spending twice as much on a new lens, attachment or accessory, and without training you will have wasted the investment you have made in expensive equipment that you are not going to get the most from. Training of the type we do has to be quite costly, and when you move on to more tailored days then in most cases we spend as long preparing for your day with us as we spend on the course. The benefit is that you get exactly the training you want, achieving your objectives, making the most of your time and training investment.

Which course is right for you

Often people have some knowledge, maybe  they have been taking photographs for some time, maybe they have moved from film, or maybe they have attended a load of group sessions or read some books,  maybe they are a self taught professional photographer, in these cases what course is the best start point may not be obvious. so we have a simple guide,

Ask yourself these questions. Without needing to go and look it up could you explain what hyperfocal distance is, do you know without research about how much of the depth of a scene is in focus (depth of field) for 400mm lens at 20ft at f16. Do you know what the f16 means, and how its calculated, do you know what an EV table is and how to use it, do you understand exposure, and can you estimate an exposure looking out of window without a camera or meter, do you understand why F8 to F16 is two stops difference while 1/125 to 1/250 second is only one, do you understand why buildings appear to lean back in some photos, do you know how to have wheel spin on a racing car while still having the rest of the car sharp, do you know how to stop sky's from being overexposed, can you control water in an image to be natural, appear frozen or misty. do you understand white balance and use preset white balance using a white or grey card to set it, can you use fill flash, bounce flash and understand the colour of flash, can you use several flash units with no cables between them,

If you can confidently answer all of these very basic photography questions then you should be considering either the tailored 1:1 or  perhaps masterclass. If any of these may you stop and have doubts then start with one of the introductory courses, because we teach you one to one we can go quickly over the ground you know, and expand your knowledge into other areas, this does not mean you are going to spend a lot of time going over the material you already understand. You will achieve more in the day by starting from the beginning and quickly going through everything covering some items more fully, expanding correcting knowledge than you would by jumping into a topic and then spending a lot of the day patching bits of knowledge as holes appear. There will always be some patching with more advanced courses, but this needs to be minimal, it difficult to lean by patchwork adding patches over patches rather than in an organised way.

If you can spend several days with us, then an introductory course followed by one or more of the others will work, but add the tailored 1 to1 to the introductory and avoid the temptation to jump into a masterclass, this requires more experience really.

What to do next

Either phone or email us saying what level you think you are at, and what you want to cover and we can make recommendation to meet your needs. If you call you will speak to a photographer, we have no sales people. Just cal to chat about the possibilities if you like.

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