They started this fall!  I'm offering customized camera and photography lessons for digital single lens reflex camera (D-SLR) users in Oakville - Burlington.

Walkabouts -- we meet over coffee and talk about your camera, and then we head outside and take pictures.

In-Your-Home -- We meet in your home, spread your equipment out on the kitchen table, and learn what it is all about. Perhaps we go for a neighbourhood walk.

Course content summaries are just down the page, here

- Just one person

- A couple who share
  a camera

- Two to five people

I'm also providing one-on-one on-going mentoring to help you grow as a photographer. Mentoring is shaped to your desires and ambitions. I can provide assignments, review work, instil a photographic work ethic, or help solve a technical problem.

Imagine a pacing document guiding and encouraging you to dig deeper, or spread your talents more broadly, at a pace that pushes you to be creative, while having lots of fun.

Modern high quality digital cameras are extraordinarily complicated, but these cameras are jumping off the shelves into the hands of newcomers to photography.

It’s usually – not always – easy to find the "on" switch.
And then – “Now what?”

Courses shaped to meet your
 individual needs

"I didn't even know
what questions to ask!"

Specific content to match your camera brand and model

1/ Welcome to Your D-SLR Camera

What the important knobs, levers, buttons, switches and menus do, and why you need to care.

The sensor
It replaces film, and holds the Megapixels. What’s this mean?

The memory card
It also replaces film, and holds the pictures. What’s this mean?

The processing chip
It's like developing the film in a darkroom, but instantaneous. Newer means better.

The lens
What your camera sees. Why are there so many lenses anyway?

What do all those numbers mean?

The mode dial
What’s that dial with Auto and A, T or S, P and M, and maybe some little pictures, all about?

The viewfinder and focus
Here’s how all those red squares in the viewfinder make your pictures sharp.

The LCD screen on the camera back
Helping you take the picture, and then seeing how it turned out

Built-in light meter
Translating what Evaluative, Matix, Center-Weighted, Partial and Spot mean, creating nicely exposed photos

How to pick an ISO number; choosing picture styles
They are like having a dozen different films inside your camera, all at once.

Balanced expectations
Just what is it a camera can actually do.

2/ Three Frame-Worthy Photographs

By managing your shutter speed and aperture we’ll go out on our walkabout and create three photographs worth framing.

Shutter speeds
Fast or slow and why.

Apertures and F stops
Wide or narrow and why.

The mode dial revisited
How and when to use Auto, A, S or T, P or M to get your shutter speed and aperture right.

3/ What to Buy Next

All those camera magazines and weekly fliers are packed with ads for things to buy. Money burning a hole in your pocket? I can help you spend wisely.

Lenses
Wide angle, telephoto, prime, zoom - when and why. Get the most out of what you have. Learn what to add.

Filters
Polarizers – the most useful filter of all.

A camera-maker flash gun
What’s it good for.

Reflectors
Lowest priced way to improve your photos.

Four-part welcome classes

What we'll learn today
A few minutes of theory, probably in a coffee shop

A tour of your camera
We look at the buttons, knobs, dials, and screens

The Walkabout
Several hours of combining advice with picture taking

Seeing how well we did
Wrap up back in the coffee shop, looking at the pictures

My qualifications as a photography educator

I’ve informally helped people learn about photography for years. Then in 2008 I started teaching at the Henry’s School of Imaging for a year and a half, helping more than a thousand people seated in the lunch rooms of orange camera stores learn to use their cameras.

I loved the class response forms; lots of "Excellents" and "Very goods" for my part of the classes, but there were too many lower ratings on the course content I was required to teach.

And people wanted to be out into the world, not stuck in a lunchroom.

I'm on the web. You can see 16,000 of my responses to web-based photo questions at www.DPReview.com . Put BAK in the search box, or look in the Pro Digital Talk forum, Lighting Techniques forum, Canon camera forums, and Canon SLR Lens Talk forum.

HOW MUCH LEARNING FOR HOW MUCH MONEY?

The Welcome to Your D-SLR Camera courses are about three to four hours, plus a telephone conversation or two beforehand about what matters to you, so the course can be customized.

Sessions can start and end in an Oakville or Burlington coffee shop. I buy coffee at the start and finish. We cover some theory at the start, and at the end we'll review pictures you took. You'll go home with some info sheets to help you remember what you learned.

The In-Your-Home courses are similar, with either a neighborhood walk or we can set up a little shooting area in which to demonstrate the various features and capabilities of your camera. You provide the coffee.

• One person exclusive: $175
• A couple who share a camera: $200
• Two to five people, $125 each

Three Frame-Worthy Photographs sessions are available for photographers who have taken the welcome course, or have a basic or better understanding of your camera. The three to four hour sessions concentrate on finding interesting subjects and themes, learning to "see the ;light" and fine tuning the settings to take advantage of the camera's capabilities. They are art and technology, intertwined, resulting, perhaps, with three images on your camera that you would like to print, frame and hang on your wall.

• One person exclusive: $175
• A couple who share a camera: $200
• Two to five people, $125 each

Mentoring. One hour sessions $75. Half hour sessions $40. In your home, at a coffee shop, or on location where you want help taking a photograph.

What to Buy Next sessions can usually be conducted over the phone, and these are free. I love helping photographers spend money wisely.

HST is additional.

This is my friend Max. BAK's Walkabout Photography Lessons and courses explain how to freeze the action of his legs and ears, how to keep detail in a black face, why the grass is sharp by Max's feet but soft and unobtrusive in the background, what ISO to use, how to choose which lens settings to use, and more.

Here's lots of other dog pictures. Enjoy!

Whether you call it photographic education, camera lessons, photography lessons, photography classes, school of imaging, or just learning how to take pictures, the end result is the same.

You will be much more comfortable with your digital single lens reflex camera, you'll use it more, and you, your family and friends, will have great pictures to enjoy, for decades.

416 - 879 5771    BrianKilgore@BrianKIlgore.com

Ask questions about the classes. No obligation.