A Year With My Camera
This an excerpt from the website A Year With My Camera explaining about the course.
The course restarts in January, April and September each year. You will automatically be added to the next start date, and in the meantime you will get a weekly email with projects and techniques to practise before the AYWMC itself starts.
THE COURSE IS FREE
The email course is free. The first 6 emails starting in January/April/September have the entire "Get Off Auto" module including all quizzes, checklists and expanded examples. The subsequent emails have the essentials of each of the following lessons but you will need the workbooks or the video course to get the expanded versions of each lesson.
You'll get one lesson a week by email for a year, and if you follow along step by step, you'll be off auto after 6 weeks, and shooting photos you are proud of after 12. For the rest of the year you'll be refining your skills and polishing your technique.
A Year With My Camera AYWMC website. Check it out
I have just restarted this course as originally joined in September 2017. I bought the workbooks and the journal, although it is not necessary to purchase them to do the course, and worked really well for a few months but other things get in the way and good intentions sometimes fall by the wayside. I did however do a BETA course over the winter months with the Tutor of AYWMC, Emma Davies who was looking for people to trial her new Fine Art Flower Photography course. This was a real insight into doing studio photography and I was very happy to get back into Macro and close up as well as learning new skills in editing and getting up to speed with new programmes.
The AYWMC course offers a solution to the problem of never having enough time. It can be done in pockets-of-time and doing little bits of prep work before going out for the day. There is no pressure with deadlines and assignments to hand in. You learn as you go and whatever you manage to do is a step forward in getting to know your camera, getting you to use the manual settings and above all just getting you out and about with a camera in hand. It creates a need to learn more and each little lesson gives you a great sense of achievement. I love the way we can all share our photos and feel part of a group through joining AYWMC on Facebook. Each class start date has their own Facebook group so that you have all started at the same time and journey together. There is now even a Graduates group for people that have finished their year but want to stay in touch and share tips and ideas.
For me the important thing, as having got myself an all singing and dancing Digital SLR that was gathering dust in the spare room, I needed a reason to start using it again. It is all too easy nowadays to use your camera on your phone, as great as they are and they have a real place in recording moments, but the skills that I learnt 15 years ago were slowly fading. This course has given me the reason to have 'a project' a theme to work on. It doesn't really matter that the #12pics1day is not done on the first Saturday of the month. You soon realise that by making it a project and on your 'to do' list then it gives you a reason to take out your camera.
It is very important in our busy lives that we lead to have time to do things for ourselves. To have that time-out and to learn a new skill or to brush up on an old one. We all need to take pleasure from and have fun producing creative work.
