Fundamentals of Digital Photography 2012 - FREE!

creativeLive is offering another free workshop.  This one is a 5 day workshop on the  Fundamentals of Digital Photography 2012 by John Greengo.  Yep, a 5 day workshop for free.  It's live from 9AM - 4PM (PST) April 9 - 13.

CreativeLive offers a lot of free workshops so be sure to check them out soon.

Update 4/14/2012: I wasn't able to watch the whole 5 day Fundamentals of Digital Photography 2012 workshop, but creativeLive replayed each day's workshop in the evening so I was able to watch bits and pieces here and there after I got home from work. I liked John Greengo's teaching style and the information he presented so much that I bought the workshop (25 hours of video + 10 pdf files of the slides).    Topics include The Photographer's Eye, Cameras, Lenses, Light, Focus, Exposure, Gadgets, and Composition.

I downloaded the videos to watch and rewatch whenever I like.  Actually I have been downloading them for the past 3 days and don't have them all yet.  Just an example of how exensive this training is: the 10 pdf files contain over 1,500 pages.

I would definitely recommend this course over the NYIP Complete Course in Professional Photography.

NYIP Photography Course Review

Gustavo asked - "Did you like the NYIP course?"

To answer your question, Gustavo, I didn't dislike it.  Well, at least some of it. There were parts of it I liked and parts that really disappointed me.  At this point I don't think it was worth the price, but I haven't turned in any of the assignments or asked for much help from the advisers so I could be wrong.  

On the plus side (in no particular order):

• it covers a lot of different topics (some better than others),
• the newer booklets were easy to read and well illustrated
• the "free gifts" were of better quality than I thought they would be,
• the one question I've asked of the student advisers was answered promptly and the answer was helpful,
• I liked the instructors - never met them but they seemed nice when talking with each other on the audio CDs and DVDs,
• the DVDs were informative, and
• the audio CDs were interesting.  

On the negative side (in order, starting with most negative):

• some of the booklets were too old - a few were WAY too old.  I think over 20 years old is too old for a textbook   This was the biggest disappointment for me,
• some of the topics weren't covered in enough detail so I had to do a lot of additional research,
• there should have been more DVDs on more topics,  They updated the videos from VHS to DVD but they were the same old videos - mostly pertinent, but they could have added at least one new one,
• I didn't find the audio CDs as instructive as I thought they should have been,  They were mostly interesting, but .....,
• I thought each lesson should have its own CD - sometimes there were several lessons on one CD and sometimes a lesson was split over 2 CDs, and
• I didn't find the comprehensive exams very helpful.   

Some other comments:

• The school claims that you can continue to ask questions of them after you graduate which would be a plus, but of course I'm not there yet so don't really know.
• I noticed in the older booklets that they had a page of "homework" - pictures you should take to reinforce the lessons - I don't know why they left those out of the new books.  I think it would have been very helpful. 
• I finished the reading, audio, and DVDs in under 4 months, but one of those months I hardly touched it and the time includes a lot of additional researching.   I mostly did the course on weekends.  (What I'm saying is that it didn't seem to be a lot of content for the money.) 
• I learned a lot from the course which to me is more important than liking the course, but I think I could have learned the same information for less money and possibly learned it better.  I did a lot of research before I took the course and I couldn't find one self-study course that offered the structured learning that NYIP offered and I needed that to get started.  I should have looked harder because there are some out there.  Some for more money and some for less.  Update 09/20/2012: for two examples see my posts Fundamentals of Digital Photography 2012 and Karl Taylor's Free Photography Mini-Course.