How to Photograph Fireworks

I thought I would post a few links to tutorials on photographing fireworks as our local Freedom Festival and fireworks display will be this weekend.  It is always held the weekend before the Independence Day holiday.

1. Photograph Fireworks at Wired
2. How to Photograph Fireworks by Steve Brookwood; 4 minute YouTube video.
3. Photographing Fireworks, Step by Step by Dave Johnson at PCWorld
4. How to Photograph Fireworks and Photographing Fireworks in Your Backyard from New York Institute of Photography (NYIP)
5. How to Photograph Fireworks Displays by Darrin Rouse and Neutral Density Filter Fireworks Photography by Tom Bricker at Digital Photography School
6. Photographing Fireworks by Geoff Lawrence, includes section on Photoshop
7. Photographing Fireworks at Garry Black photography - article on using a film camera for fireworks photography
8. How to Photograph Fireworks; from Y Tech (Yahoo!), includes paragraph with tips for using your camera phone
9. Photographing Fireworks at Kodak; for the casual photographer
10. How to Photograph Fireworks 8 minute YouTube video from Fro Knows Photo

Tut Tut Tut

If you're looking for some free photography lessons visit photo.tuts+.  They have video tutorials and articles on all aspects of photography - from hardware to capturing the image to post production.  There is a special section for beginners called basix.

photo tuts+ is part of the Plus education network.  Another one of their sites you might want to check out is psd tuts+ for Photoshop users.  The special effects tutorials look especially interesting.

After Effects (Adobe's software for "creating sophisticated motion graphics and cinematic visual effects") is covered at ae tuts+.  You could learn how to make people walk through walls.

Karl Taylor's Free Photography Mini-Course

This morning I watched a very informative video on lighting, Photography Tips, Essential Skills, Quickly Transform Your Photos, by Karl Taylor. 

That led me to the web site Karl Taylor Photography Masterclass where I discovered he offered a free mini-course in photography as an introduction to his DVD courses.  Look at what you get with this free course:  Over 1 1/2 hours of video tutorials and 8 articles.

Lesson 1 - The Six Essentials - PDF
Lesson 2 - Understanding Light (Part 1) - 6 minutes
Lesson 3 - Understanding Light (Part 2) - 5 minutes
Lesson 4 - A Review of Light - PDF
Lesson 5 - Natural Light Portraiture - 5 minutes



Lesson 6 - Advanced Portraiture Techniques - PDF
Lesson 7 - Shutter Speeds - PDF
Lesson 8 - Action Photography - 6 minutes
Lesson 9 - Six Essentials Review - PDF
Lesson 10 - Travel Photography - 6 minutes
Lesson 11 - Ambient & Artificial Light - PDF
Lesson 12 - Fashion Shoot with Flash & Ambient Light - 6 1/2 minutes
Lesson 13 - Perfect Photo Composition - PDF
Lesson 14 - Converting Images to Black & White in Photoshop - PDF

Bonus Video 1 - Tripods & Maintenance – 8 ½ minutes
Bonus Video 2 - Polarising Filters – 7 minutes
Bonus Video 3 - Lens Hoods – 2 minutes
Bonus Video 4 - Camera Bags & Straps – 6 minutes
Bonus Video 5 - Using on Camera Flash – 3 minutes
Bonus Video 6 - Lens Quality – 5 minutes
Bonus Video 7 - ND Graduated Filters – 2 minutes
Bonus Video 8 - Exposure & Histograms – 4 minutes
Bonus Video 9 - Adding Graduated Skys in Photoshop – 4 ½ minutes
Bonus Video 10 - Preparing Your Images for Print – 9 minutes
Bonus Video 11 - Pro-Lab Printing – 10 ½ minutes
Bonus Video 12 - Enhancing Skies in Photoshop – 5 minutes
Bonus Video 13 - Shooting for Black & White – 2 minutes

If you like the free course, you can buy the DVDs.  For $99.90 you get Introduction to Photography, Travel and Landscape Photography, and Advanced Digital SLR Photography.  Each DVD is about  1 1/2 hours in length; a total of 4 1/2 hours of training for under $100.  That seems like a reasonable price, but that's not all (like they say on TV)!  You get 30 bonus videos for probably an additional 3 hours.   The bonus videos include some Photoshop tutorials.

I haven't seen the DVDs so I can't voice an opinion either yea or nay, but the free stuff is more than worth the price.  Despite his English accent, Karl is easy to understand, explanations are clear, he repeats things for clarity, not fill, and it's information beginners can use.   I did google reviews for the DVDs and didn't see any negative ones (some had issues with some aspects of the intro course, but still liked it),  Here's a "professional" review from ePHOTOzine (which may be somewhat biased as Karl's a contributor to ePHOTOzine). 


The one thing I don't like about his PDF files and his website is the white text on black background.  I don't know why, but I always find that combination online stark, irritating, and depressing.  That has nothing to do with the content or quality of the site or DVDs, but I just don't like it. [Updated 01/22/12 - Karl's main site does not have a black background - it's bright and modern; the training videos page still has a black background, but you're watching the vids not reading so it's more tolerable.]

Addendum 6/28/2012:  I get a lot of hits on this page and for those who want to know - The free mini course truly is free. It's a great way to start learning more about photography.  You do have to provide an email address and Karl will send you emails every few days or so selling his DVDs, but they usually contain tips and videos and other interesting stuff as well.  And you can always unsubscribe.

[Update 6/28/2012: I purchased the 3 DVD professional course about a year ago. I found the Introduction to Photography beneficial. The others less so but they were interesting and educational. The one "con" I had for all the DVDs was that they didn't allow enough time for me to look at the photographs. They weren't shown till the end and special effects made it appear more as if I were watching a movie. I wanted to take my time and study the photos. (I know - I could hit pause on the ol' remote.) Since my purchase Karl has expanded his product line. Some packages include certification and portfolio reviews. Learn more at USA DVD series or UK DVD series.]

Photo Joe's On-line Courses

A semi-retired college professor named Joe taught on-line photography courses in the Saint Louis area and has posted courses from 2009 at Joe's Photo Courses so you can take a college photography course free of charge.   When you go to the site click on one of the first 3 barges to find links to the three courses: Photoshop, Digital Photography, and Color Photography. 

I haven't done any of the courses, but I did read through the Digital Photography course.  It is about half Photoshop (starts in Lesson 6 of 12 lessons) and because this is a college course there's a lot of history and stuff like that, but Joe is funny, crusty, and opinionated so what I did read wasn't dry or boring.

You can't submit pictures to Joe for his critique since the course is free, but there are several forums on the Internet where your can get free reviews of your photos.

Here's another freebie for you.

Here's another freebie for you.  Lynda.com  offers a free 14 day trial of their eLearning courses (and you don't have to give a credit card number to get it). 

I just signed up for the trial so I haven't taken any courses yet, but I did watch one of their sample videos from a Photography course and found it very informative and well-done.

If you haven't heard of Lynda.com, here's what I've learned in a nutshell:

1. Lynda.com sells monthly and annual subscriptions to on-line video courses.  You can also buy the courses as books or DVDs.  (NOTE: Your credit card is automatically billed each month or year until you cancel.) 
2. The subscription fees are reasonable for the unlimited access: $25 - $37.50 a month or $250 - $375 a year.  The higher fees include exercise files.  A subscription gives you 24/7 access to all of the over 900 courses and 59,000 tutorials currently available for many different subjects. 
3. There are over 100 courses in photography.  Photography courses include cameras and gear, lighting, exposure, lighting, photo editing, photo assignments, and documentaries.
4. Each course has a table of contents, description of the course, and a brief biography of the author.  You can see this information without a subscription and also sample some segments of a course.
5. You can stop, rewind, and replay segments of a course as often as you need to.  The courses can have closed captioning if you want to read along with the instructor.
6. The courses I looked at were available in 4 formats: Flash, Quicktime Standard and Custom, and Windows Media.  I did notice that some of the general videos on their site were only available in Quicktime.

The first course I'm going to take is Fundamentals of Photography: Exposure (a 12 chapters, 3 1/2 hours long course) taught by Ben Long.  

PCWorld has a review of Lynda.com.
The Santa Barbara Better Business Bureau gives them an A rating, but does show 3 complaints.
There are several examples of Lynda.com videos on YouTube; such as the one on Lenses.