Website of The Week: Digital Photography School

Screen shot of the Digital Photography School website

The Digital Photography School website has been on my blog roll for over a year, and has become my first ‘port of call’ whenever I want to catch up on the latest camera reviews, photography tips, or tech tips on how to get the best out of my camera. To quote from the home page of the DPS:

Welcome to Digital Photography School! Discover how to use your digital camera with our Digital Photography Tips. We are a community of photographers of all experience levels who come together to learn, share and grow in our understanding of photography.

This is a massive site, and it might take you some time to get your head around it, so my advice is to start your reading or research in that part of the site that you are particularly interested in right now. For example, if you are looking to purchase your first or new camera, start with the reviews. Of course, it helps if you have some idea of the brand or type of camera you are thinking of buying, before you start wading your way through the hundreds of camera reviews on the site.

If you already have a camera, and want to learn more about how to get the best shots out of it, head over to the Tips and Tutorials section and search there for a specific question relating to your needs.

In the Post Production area of the site you will discover and endless array of advice to help you turn your images into the best possible photographs they can be after they have been downloaded onto your computer.

There is much to discover on the Digital Photography School site, and all skill levels are catered for. It doesn’t matter if you only own a ‘point and shoot’ camera, I am confident that you will find something of interest here to help you improve your photographic skills.

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Here are just a few of the hundreds of photography books that are available via Amazon.Com to help you with your photographic skills.

WEA = Life-Long Learning

~ On Tuesday (Never to Old to Live And Learn) I wrote that I had signed up for a Spanish For Fun and Travel course at the WEA, the Worker’s Educational Association. The Association, which publishes five course guides each year, has been running classes for adults in Adelaide for almost 100 years. Since there are many courses in the current guide related to travel, I thought I would explore the possibilities further in this entry.

A quick look through the winter guide (download PDF here…) reveals a host of interesting short courses for the intending traveller.

To begin with, the most obvious ones are the language courses. Apart from the Spanish class, one could also learn some Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese Mandarin. And if you still had time to spare, you could also be taught to communicate with the deaf and hearing impaired by learning to Sign using your hands.

If your travels are taking you to Turkey or other countries of the Islamic world, why not take the Islamic Art: A Glorious Legacy course, or the Civilisations of Turkey course?

Food lovers can prepare for their gastronomic adventures by choosing from over a dozen classes covering such regional fare as Spanish Tapas, or cuisines from Morocco, Greece, Thailand, India, Vietnam, China, Italy, and several other countries.

Less obvious are the courses for people with an interest in archaeology, history and culture. Joining these you can learn to decipher ancient Egyptian images; travel through Tuscany; or learn about Moorish Spain, the Crusades, or the early Christian sites of Syria.

Planning a visit to Brazil or other South American countries? Then why not sign up for a short course in Latin dancing? Then you will be able to Rumba, Cha-Cha and Tango with the best of the Latin Lovers!

Heck, you could even look through the Practical Art listing, and try your hand at drawing or landscape painting. Instead of coming home with 3000 images on your digital camera, imagine returning with some original canvases or sketches made while relaxing in the hills of Tuscany or the squares of Venice.

Speaking of digital cameras, why not do the Introduction to Photography course? Or if that’s too basic one of the short courses on getting the best out of your digital SLR camera? Or the one-day Close-up Photography Workshop? That way, instead of simply taking ‘happy snaps’, you might come home with photographs worthy of the best professional photographers.

Yes friends, a world of learning awaits each and everyone of us. Once again, may I remind you – there are similar institutions to the WEA elsewhere in Australia and overseas. If the information in this blog entry has inspired you to embark on a journey of life-long learning, check out the sites below, or ask at your local public library for information about similar organisations in your city.

Links to Associated Sites

• WEA Sydney
• WEA UK
• WEA Illawarra
• Council of Adult Education Melbourne
• Adult Learning Association
• International Federation of Workers’ Education Associations (IFWEA)

Download a PDF of the WEA Winter Course Guide here…

The Plugged in Traveller

~ Once upon a very long time ago, the compleat traveller could explore the world with just a suitcase or two, and maybe a notebook and pen to record their adventures. You could of course, still travel the world with nothing more than a backpack and a notebook and pen to record your memories, but increasingly, that just won’t do.

Now the compleat traveller doesn’t feel complete unless they have a mobile phone with global roaming enabled (preferably with GPS built in), a WiFi enabled laptop, a digital video camera and digital SLR (with at least a couple of extra lenses), and much more.

When I travelled in 2008, I had all of the above (except that my phone didn’t have a GPS function), and all of the associated paraphernalia that goes with it: separate battery chargers for both cameras and the phone (including spare batteries for the cameras); a power pack for the laptop; a collection of power socket converters that enabled me to plug my various chargers and laptop into the electricity grids of England, the United States, and Greece – where each country required its own specific converters, of course!

Then there were the associated cables needed to connect all this technology together. Cables for transferring images from the digital camera to the computer; separate cables for transferring film from the digital video cassettes to the laptop; a recovery disc just in case my computer ‘crashed’ while I was on the road somewhere; a couple of memory sticks; and God knows what else!

I had so much gear with me that I had to hump it around in a separate shoulder bag. At least it was small enough to serve as my carry on bag when flying.

Thankfully, the day is fast approaching when some of these items will all come together into one small, light weight, compact unit. That unit will even have a catchy name to help it sell –something like: iPhone! Oh, yeah, they already have those.

Unfortunately, I don’t, but I’m working on it.

Mind you, by the time I am ready or able to purchase one, the technology will have moved on to some other even more compact, fully featured device that does even more than an iPhone can do, and it will do it faster, cheaper, and better.