Review my lecture outline...please!!

[Abitconfused]

I will be providing a digital photography training session. What have I forgotten?

1. Accept an assignment to photograph __________ .
2. Complete Hold Harmless agreement or Model Release when applicable.
3. Select best camera and lens or lenses for the job.
5. Bring a Polarizing Filter or Neutral Density Filter as needed.
6. Format memory card in the camera after backing up images.
7. Set the ISO for the shooting situation you are in.
8. Select a metering mode: Matrix, Center Weighted or Spot.
9. Set the White Balance for the lighting conditions i.e. sunny, shade, artificial lighting.
10. Use Gray Card to obtain a true white balance if possible.
11. Use a camera calibration tool for color accuracy (X-Rite).
12. Bring a tripod, external flash, rain jacket, and lens hood as needed.
13. Select Aperture Priority (A or Av), Shutter Speed Priority (S or Tv), or Manual (M) as needed.
14. Select the number and location of Focus Points required for your subject.
15. Select Single Servo or Continuous Servo (focusing).
16. Select RAW or JPEG, sometimes TIFF as an image file.
17. Adjust Exposure Compensation as needed after referencing the histogram to determine exposure.
18. Select the proper color space sRGB or Adobe RGB
19. Set your distance or zoom for proper field of view for your subject of interest.
20. Use Focus as needed to enhance the visual communication you intend to achieve.
21. Select the proper aperture and shutter speed.
22. Use Bracketing or vary EV (Exposure Value) using Exposure Compensation dial.
23. Select options such as Active D Lighting.
24. Select options such as time delay, sequential shooting, or fast or slow burst shooting.
25. “Work the scene.” Look up, Look down, look all around.
26. Steady now, take as many photographs as you wish.
27. Composition:
A. Rule of Thirds. “Rule”
B. Direction of light
C. Hard or Soft light
D. Near vs. Far, Up vs. Down, Leading Lines, Framing
E. Sometimes center sometimes not
F. Remember foreground, background and corners.
28. Post Production:
A. Adjust White Point
B. Set black and white point
C. Adjust saturation
D. Adjust contrast
E. Correct color
F. Adjust image size and compression
G. Sharpen G. Crop
H. Final Sharpening is conservative
I. Print (300 PPI) or publish on WWW (96 PPI)
29. Archive or backup images
30. Evaluate your results on many levels: communication, composition and technical accuracy.

[george013]

I will be providing a digital photography training session. What have I forgotten?

I. Print (300 PPI) or publish on WWW (96 PPI)

Why this one?

George

[lukaswerth]

Will the participants in our lecture ever get to make a picture when crushed under this barrage of single tasks? I certainly wouldn't.

Lukas

[William W]

I will be providing a digital photography training session. What have I forgotten?

Ed, I am a very bit confused.

Could you please explain exactly what you mean by "training session" I. E. you need to DEFINE your Target Audience; the size of that Audience; MOST IMPORTANTLY - please define the STYLE and DELIVERY mechanism(s) of the "training session" and the OUTCOMES that you want to achieve.

As it stands - your list reads as a set of dot point reminders for your Lesson Prep for a Theory Lecture titled something like "Prep and Procedure for a Portrait Session"

As a dot point reminder list, the list seems OK to me, though in many places is both quite prescriptive and also very restrictive - for example - why prescribe to only use AV TV or M, why not P? - why prescribe setting White Balance, why not use Auto WB? - why prescribe to select raw OR JPEG, why not capture both? etc . . .

To my mind this list does not relate to a "digital photography training session", because to me, those words have a precise meaning: i.e. the participants do TRAINING - which means they bring their camera and they use it - A LOT and OFTEN - under my guidance.

WW

[IzzieK]

With your long list of to-do (or to remember), I agree with Lukas and William about the heaviness and restrictions so my question is -- how long do you have to teach this? For instance, when I was learning PP (some on your list) it took me a while to learn the process simply because I was questioning the merit of why I should do it...what criteria? Sometimes and there are some times, one gets the right colour, the right atmosphere, the right everything in camera with very little pp. especially if it is planned photoshoot, once they have learned the rest of what you stated from the list above pp list. Just a thought...you might come across a student who is as hard headed as I am who wants to know why ... about almost everything. How many students are you teaching? for how long...? Did I ask that already? sorry....

[dje]

Ed, as the others have said, it would help if we knew the length of your session and the target audience. It seems like a lot of topics to cover in one session and it seems to be a bit of a mix of basic and more advanced topics. But just a couple of points

• You mention setting ISO but I don't think you mention the use of Auto ISO
• I would suggest that the use of a camera colour calibration device (point 11) is perhaps a bit un-necessary for people attenting a training session such as this
• In 28A I think you probably mean Adjust White Balance rather than White Point which is mentioned in 28B

Dave

[Mike Buckley]

I concur with what everyone has already mentioned. If you do decide to discuss such a long list of items, consider organizing them in an order that seems logical. As an example, you mention the need to bring a tripod and other items after you have begun making camera settings even though the use of a tripod will determine some of the settings made before you mention a tripod. To help your audience keep everything organized in their mind, also consider grouping items into headings much as you did with the headings, Composition and Post-Production.

Personally, I believe you left out the most important item: envision the image. That should be very near the top of your list because envisioning the image you want to make affects the camera and post-processing settings you will use.

If you're going to discuss use of a tripod and if you're also going to discuss such a long list of items, also discuss use of Live View and the various methods of releasing the shutter while using a tripod.

One of your items is Steady now. Consider discussing effective hand holding technique and tripod use.

[Manfred M]

Ed -my first question is who is your target audience? .

My second question is "how much time have you got for this training session"

Once you have answered those questions, then you can start looking at the material you can and should cover.

Set up your lesson plan in a logical order and then put some of those points (at the appropriate level and length of time spent on them) into your lesson.

What level of photographic knowledge do they have? What is the intended final use for the images? How long is the training session?

Use the KISS rule (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and keep things at a level appropriate for your audience. If this training session is for a local seniors group that want to take better pictures, then this is way over the top. If it is for a set of very experienced photographers, they will walk out on you because you are telling them things they already know.

Of your list, there is a lot things you need to review, simplify and correct (if the need to be there at all).

Point 2 - I've never had anyone sign a release, as I don't do commercial photography where I sell to a third party; I don't need one of those.

Point A and B - you are partially repeating yourself.

Point I - Just plain wrong.

[Mike Buckley]

If this training session is for a local seniors group that want to take better pictures, then this is way over the top. If it is for a set of very experienced photographers, they will walk out on you because you are telling them things they already know.

The more I think about what Manfred has mentioned, the more I realize that I can't think of a target audience that would be appropriate for such a long, detailed list of items. It's as if you're trying to teach someone almost everything there is to know about photography in one presentation, which is never going to be an effective approach.

[Abitconfused]

This is a four hour program for beginners. Of course the list consists of what may be called reminder points rather than precise wording. I intend to reorganize my existing lecture to conform more closely to a workflow. I have found that most people never read the manual that came with their camera. Who can blame them? Many manuals are very long. One thing that discourages many beginners from reading the text or moving from fully AUTO is a lack of knowledge of options, buttons and dials, menu, or introduction to terminology. The students are holding and using the camera as we move through terminology, buttons and dials. So this is a list of discussion points not a hammer to bang against outstretched fingers. Much is in the delivery. Nevertheless learning requires work and I work their little brains hard. I have given about 100 such talks and most people say. "Teach me the camera." Certainty, I add inspiration, philosophy, and helpful hints as we go along but an outline aids organization. The list is a skeleton not the body. I need to know what, if any, bones are missing and in what order they may be best represented. Knowledge is power. You can't bang out a Pieta merely because you love sculpture or adore your hammer and chisel.

[Mike Buckley]

I can't imagine an effective four-hour program for beginners of anything that doesn't evolve mostly around hands-on, one-on-one instruction. I mention that because you didn't mention the number of people in your training session, their age or the nature of your training session other than that the students use their camera as they follow along with you. I wonder about their age because you mention "their little brains."

Your analogy regarding the manual doesn't work for me. That's because the typical manual explains what each part of the camera does more than teaching how and why to achieve a particular look.

Considering that you have given 100 similar presentations, I don't understand what you're trying to achieve in this thread. Not that we can't improve anything we have done hundreds of times, but it seems to me that after making so many presentations you would already have received helpful feedback about the effectiveness of your presentations from your students that would be far more valuable than such an open-ended approach used in this thread. That's not a criticism; it's a point of confusion for me.

[Manfred M]

A few thoughts for you:

If these are beginners; keep things real simple. The level of detail you are getting into looks way overboard. The probably have NO knowledge of either printing or post-processing. They just want nice jpegs that they can upload to social media sites, although a few may have bigger ambitions. If they are planning to print, they'll take their memory card over to the local Costco to be printed. RAW, other than mentioning it, forget about it, beginners are going to be best served by jpeg and sRGB.

During my working career, I was involved (somewhat obliquely) in adult education. As someone leading design teams, I was often called in by the training departments to help develop and sometimes deliver training material. The trainers had this really strange idea that the designers actually knew how the thing was supposed to work and how people would use the product(s).

The other thing I learned from the professional trainers is that learning is built on things that we already know, so if you get too far beyond what the average beginner already knows (using a smartphone as the lowest common denominator), you are going to lose your audience.

Other than the "knowing your audience" and "how much time will we have to train", the other thing I learned is that people only retain between 5% and 15% of the material that is being delivered, so some of the key points will need to be repeated 5 or 6 times, before it sinks in.

If you get people taking pictures and they are getting decent results, then you will have done your job really well. A small percentage of them might actually try to get out of 100% automated mode and become more advanced.

[DanK]

I'm with Mike--I no longer know what you are asking for. If you have done 100 of these, you presumably have your own opinion of what worked and not. However, as someone who has taught for years, I agree with the others: I wouldn't cover as much. I would cover much less, and I would include time at many points for students to try with their own cameras what you described (and, of course, to answer questions). Just MHO.

[xpatUSA]

I will be providing a digital photography training session. What have I forgotten?

13. Select Aperture Priority (A or Av), Shutter Speed Priority (S or Tv), or Manual (M) as needed.
21. Select the proper aperture and shutter speed.

In Aperture Priority or in Shutter Priority, we can not "Select the proper aperture and shutter speed".

Would suggest "or" instead of "and".

15. Select Single Servo or Continuous Servo (focusing).
16. Select RAW or JPEG, sometimes TIFF as an image file.

Is "servo" the standard photographic term, rather than "auto"?

Raw, JPEG or raw+JPEG? Sometimes TIFF or DNG?

F. Adjust image size and compression
G. Sharpen G. Crop

What is "adjust compression"? I though that was done during saving.

Two "G."s doesn't look right.

I. Print (300 PPI) or publish on WWW (96 PPI)

If you publish on the web, it is not necessary to set the PPI (Browsers and Viewers ignore it). That is to say, if I set a 1280x880px image to 1440 ppi and post it here, it will come up on-screen at a physical size dictated by your monitor's dot pitch - 0.294mm on my cheap NEC, which is 86 screen dpi, not 1440 dpi.

I. Print (300 PPI) or publish on WWW (96 PPI)

Would suggest "select printing ppi" and delete reference to WWW publishing.

Hope this helps.

[Rita]

Ted, I teach all levels of First Aid and my students are mainly adults. Many of my students are first timers. I totally agree with Manfred when he refers to the KISS theory. If you are planning to cover everything on this list you won't be working their brains hard you will be doing them in. Time wise, for this list, you are giving yourself a max of 5 minutes. per topic. As you state that your students are beginners, when do they get to ask questions, what if they need help etc? There seems to be no time for this. I am reminded of the saying that "sometimes less is more".
Just my opinion.

[xpatUSA]

Ted, I teach all levels of First Aid and my students are mainly adults. Many of my students are first timers. I totally agree with Manfred when he refers to the KISS theory. If you are planning to cover everything on this list you won't be working their brains hard you will be doing them in. Time wise, for this list, you are giving yourself a max of 5 minutes. per topic. As you state that your students are beginners, when do they get to ask questions, what if they need help etc? There seems to be no time for this. I am reminded of the saying that "sometimes less is more".
Just my opinion.

There seems to be a misunderstanding or a typo. I was merely commenting on the original post which had errors, IMHO. I myself am not giving the lecture; that would be Ed, eh?

[Rita]

Ted, my apologies, my reply should say Ed. It's a typo.

[dennybeall]

I would suggest structuring the class in a different way. Start with basic explanation of focus, aperture and shutter speed, Then teach how to make a basic photo with the minimal information needed. Then perhaps composition. Composition can lead into more detailed info on shutter (fast, slow) and aperture (DOF). and build from there. More complex concepts as they build skills and need them.
If you're going to use abbreviations and acronyms then post them on an easel as they come up.
Also three rules that are useful: "1 - Tell them what you are going to tell them. 2 - Tell Them. 3 -Tell them what you told them."

[MrB]

As an overall general plan for starting a group of beginners, may I make the following suggestions:

For the first part of the course (at the very least one hour), you get them to set the camera to auto-everything, and concentrate all their attention on all the aspects of composition and framing a shot, including zooming with feet or lens, while they capture lots of different subjects at various distances, and then view, consider and discuss their results.

In the sessions that follow, you can then lead them towards controlling some of the camera's modes and parameters, to gradually enable them to affect and improve the image characteristics of the better compositions they will hopefully now be capturing.

Cheers.
Philip

[Chri5]

I would maybe consider putting the items into smaller subgroups so as not to overwhelm your students and/or scare them off. That's a lot of tasks to look at