alcina:
To help future readers to match their needs to questions:
Please include - go ahead and copy/paste these:
Your dive skill/experience level as perceived by you
I dive wet, dry, mudholes/low vis, and of course love those 100+ vis days! I've done just under 50 dives in a bit over a year which living in CO is not easy
I'd consider myself an average diver.
alcina:
Your uw photo experience level as perceived by you
I've done ten dives with a camera UW. You can see some of the results in my gallary. I would do more, but there is just not much to shoot in local areas.
alcina:
If you are at least semi-comfortable with using manual controls
Completely comfortable using manual settings.
alcina:
How often you get to dive
Not much :06: I generally get down to the hole about once every three months during the winter. In the summer generally dive a couple times a month, and will do one or two tropical trips a year.
alcina:
If you have your own camera system & what it is
S70, housing, and a SS200 strobe which I have not used yet. Topside I have a large setup including DSLR's, and Medium Fomat. I've shot and owned everything from poloriod to large format.
I think the first thing a student to decide before taking a course is what are their objectives and goals. Based on that they should match their objectives against the potential couse offerings.
Things to look for in a course are:
Course Objectives - objectives should be clearly stated, and well defined. Becoming a better photographer is NOT specific. An example of a well stated objective is: Learn the basic use of aperture, shutter, strobe, and ISO to control background, subject, and overall expsoure.
Course Outline - A step by step list of the topics to be covered as well as a timeline of practice sessions, and objectives for each topic and session.
A good digital course would cover shooting, and post processing. A lab should be available, including a photo printer, and one objective should be at least One print that is color corrected and ready for mounting.
Some photographers may want to look for advanced topics including things like wide angle photography, macro subjects, balancing strobe with available light, composition (rules of thirds and such), using multiple strobes, over/under shooting, techniques for shooting moving subjects, adobe basics, device calibration... the list can be whatever goals the student has.
Equipment selection, maintenance, and options should be stressed as photography is an equiment based art. For digital this should go beyond the camera, lenses, housings and strobes, and include software options for photo editing, calibration techniques, etc. This could get very advanced, and cover workflow options, advanced photo editing techniques, backup and RAID strategies, etc.
For film scanning techniques, and digital processing still applies as most film ends up in digital format for post processing.
The photographer teaching the class should be able to discuss all aspects of the workflow film or digital, have a strong portfolio, and have advanced skills as a photographer. This is where our LDS falls short as the instructors tend to be divers with PnS camera's and a limited knowledge of photography and the digital workflow.
I've listed a lot of things here, and there no one class that will cover all the topics I've listed. However the student maybe only interesed in one speciality in the case of the more advanced students. Anyone offering photography classes should be offering more than just a basic 101 course IMO.
I don't think that classes often put enough emphisis on the final product. After all what good is shooting just to have unprocessed images sit on a harddrive. In Every college level photo class I've taken, or taught the goal is always a finished portfolio including mounted and matted images ready for display, or a finished image that is ready for publication. This seems to be a major component missing from most UW classes that I've looked into.
