Photography and Computer Classes

Classes now available for the Independence, Blue Springs & Kansas City, Missouri area.
Sessions will be held at the Green Dog Gallery in Englewood Station in Independence.
For location and map click here.
Call or email for current class schedules at the Gallery.

Basic Digital SLR Photography (Call or Email for next Class Session)

Beginning Photoshop for Photographers (Call or Email for next Class Session)

Beginning Adobe Lightroom (Call or Email for next Class Session)

Plaza Night Photography Field Trip (Call or Email for next Class Session)

HDR Plaza Photography Field Trip (Call or Email for next Class Session)

Photographic Lighting (Call or Email for next Class Session)

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography Class (Call or Email for next Class Session)

Marketing & Self Promoting Your Photography (Call or Email for next Class Session)

For the most part new class sessions start every first week of the month. On some rare occasions a class may start on a different week due to holidays, our own schedule or private instruction. Please call or email to confirm the current starting date for any class listed below.

New Classes such as "Intro To Adobe Lightroom", "Intro to Portrait Photography", "Lighting & Flash Photography", "Beginning Self Promotion & Marketing your Photography" and other classes coming in 2009.

Also there has been increasing interest in personalized "one on one" type classes. If you have a particular area of photography that you want to learn more about please email me at info@bischoffphotography.com with any requests and we can custom design a class for you.

Basic Digital SLR Photography

Get truly stunning photos from your SLR digital camera. Do you sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed with all the terms and choices - JPEG vs. RAW, flash cards, histograms, white balance, etc? Feel confident when it comes to using exposure controls such as ISO, shutter speed, and aperture? Better understand your computer software for output to email, the web and for prints.

This 4-week class meets on Wednesday from 6pm to 9pm at our office which is located in Overland Park, KS. Assignments for each lesson are given and reviewed at the next meeting. Make & Model of your camera is required when you enroll.

Call or email for current class dates.
Private tutored classes also available.

Course Cost: $199.00
Click Here to Pay & Enroll for Class

Payable online by Visa, MasterCard or PayPal. Must be paid in full before the start of class.

Classes are limited to 10 students. Classes are held at 8500 W. 110th St. Suite #500 Overland Park, KS

Lesson 1: Getting to Know Your Digital Camera Understanding your camera controls and functions. Checklist of what your camera can and cannot do. How to get the most out of your digital camera. The biggest advantages of shooting digital

Lesson 2: File Formats RAW vs. JPEG. Various file formats - advantages and disadvantages. Storage and memory issues - doing digital photography on the road. Getting bigger files after the fact.

Lesson 3: Introduction to Exposure Aperture and shutter speed for the non-photography major. Practicing with different f-stops to get different degrees of depth of field. Alternate ways to control aperture and shutter speed.

Lesson 4: ISO/ASA & Low-Light Digital Photography ISO Equivalents - changing ISO on the fly. Avoiding noise. Shooting at night - with and without a tripod.

Lesson 5: Adjusting Exposure/White Balance Why and when you need to go off the automatic Program mode. Exposure lock and where to meter. Exposure compensation vs. true exposure control. Understanding the histogram and using it to determine best exposure. The color of light for the non-physics major. Understanding the white balance options. The easy way to getting the correct white balance.

Lesson 6: Camera to Computer –Your Software Now that you are shooting great photos its time to learn how to get them from your camera to your computer. Color correct, manipulate, resize and printing.

Lesson 7: Composition and Lens Choice Principles of design. The EZ way to understand the Golden Rectangle. Putting the Rule of Thirds to good use. Shooting vertical as well as horizontal. Understanding lens focal lengths. Wide angle options with SLR lens magnification factors.

Lesson 8: Getting Creative and Having Fun! Having fun with some of the more unusual, creative features found in many digital cameras and their accompanying software. For example, using the panoramic mode or photo stitching functions - fixing and holding exposure across multiple shots. Shooting black and white and sepia tone in the camera. Shooting in the macro mode.

Review: Voting on Best Work

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Beginning Photoshop for Photographers

Master the nuances of this powerful image-editing software. Do you find reading software manuals frustrating? Are you struggling to overcome the infamous learning curve that comes with Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements? This course will open the door to many of the most commonly used technics used to manipulate digital images. Student should own either Adobe Photoshop CS, CS2, CS3 or Photoshop Elements.

This 4-week class meets on Thursday from 6pm to  9pm at our office which is located in Overland Park, KS. Assignments for each lesson are given and reviewed at the next meeting. Make & Model of your camera is required when you enroll.

Call or email for current class dates.
Private tutored classes also available.

Course Cost: $199.00
Click Here to Pay & Enroll for Class

Payable online by Visa, MasterCard or PayPal. Must be paid in full before the start of class.

Classes are limited to 10 students. Classes are held at 8500 W. 110th St. Suite #500 Overland Park, KS

Lesson 1: Basic Setup, Workflow, and Fun with Filters Assignment: Calibrate monitor, set preferences, etc., and submit Before-and-After pairs of images showing the effects of using a Photoshop filter.

Lesson 2: Rotating and Cropping Assignment: Find or shoot some images to practice cropping. If you need to, go out and shoot some askew horizons so you have some material to use while practicing with the Crop tool.

Lesson 3: Layers and Levels Assignment: Work with images that need more contrast, and ones that need less contrast.

Lesson 4: Retouching with Cloning and the Healing Brush Assignment: Practice retouching or removing unwanted objects using the Clone tool, and at least one of the tools in the Spot Healing Brush drop-down menu.

Lesson 5: Curves, Color Balance, and Hue/Saturation Assignment: Submit Before-and-After pairs for adjusting contrast, adjusting color, and adjusting hue or saturation.

Lesson 6: Using Selection Tools Assignment: Look through your images and find several that would provide a good opportunity to use at least three of the tools and commands described in this lesson.

Lesson 7: Resolution, Image Sizing and Sharpening Assignment: Explore Photoshop's Image Size command. Take a favorite image and enlarge it as much as you possibly can, before you see those resolution problems begin to rear their ugly heads. Also, practice your cropping technique again and zoom in on one detail area of your enlarged photo.

Lesson 8: Using Text by Creating a Promo Piece Assignment: Add text to one of your favorite images, or use several images and text to make a promo piece - business card, inspirational poster or flyer for an event, or advertising/promotional piece.

Review: Voting on Best Work

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Beginning Adobe Lightroom

Learn how to use one of Adobe's latest software programs to import and manage your digital images. With Lightroom you have the ability fine tune your images exposures, color balance and contrast levels along with cropping and printing. Produce professional "slideshows" for presenting your images or build an online photo gallery that you can upload to your very own website. Learn how to embed keywords and "metadata" for easier cataloging and image searching.

This 4-week class meets on Thursday from 6pm to  9pm at our office which is located in Overland Park, KS. Assignments for each lesson are given and reviewed at the next meeting. If you own a laptop or portable computer we encourage that you bring it along for even more hands on training.

Call or email for current class dates.
Private tutored classes also available.

Course Cost: $199.00
Click Here to Pay & Enroll for Class

Payable online by Visa, MasterCard or PayPal. Must be paid in full before the start of class.

Classes are limited to 10 students. Classes are held at 8500 W. 110th St. Suite #500 Overland Park, KS

Class Outline Coming Soon!

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Plaza Photography Field Trip
(Shooting in Low light or at Night)
Call or Email for next Class Session

This is a hands on shooting trip with photographer Tim Bischoff. On this trip we will spend an evening shooting in the beautiful Plaza located in near mid town Kansas City. Photographers will be guided in the necessary skills and technical knowledge for shooting long exposures in low or night time exposures. Also what long exposures can offer as a creative effect to such subjects as fountains with water movement and street activity. We will learn where metering exposures should be based, color temperature and white balancing. Students will be encouraged to seek out subjects and will get "on the spot" feedback.

Due to the nature of long exposures students will need to have a tripod.
A limited number of tripods can be loaned out by the instructor.

The group will then meet the following week at our office for group creative reviews of everyone's work along with refreshments. This will give students time to "process" their images.

Course Cost: $29.00
Click Here to Pay & Enroll for Class
Rough meeting time will be around 7:30-8:00pm depending on sunset & weather conditions.
Students will be emailed the week of Field Trip with exact time and location to meet.

Payable online by Visa, MasterCard or PayPal. Must be paid in full before the start of class.

Classes are limited to 10 students.

 

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Photographic Lighting
(Using your Flash/Strobes and Creative Lighting)

Start understanding your flash and learning how to use it creatively and gain better exposures. Learn how it works and how to handle challenging exposure situations like shooting a bride in a white dress or a black cat against a dark background. You will learn how to use fill-flash. To minimize the harshness of direct on-camera flash this class will also discuss bounce lighting and the use of diffusers and reflectors. "Hot Lights" and multiple strobe lighting technics and more creative lighting styles will be covered.

This 2-week class meets on Tuesdays from 6pm to  9pm at our office which is located in Overland Park, KS.
Assignments for each lesson are given and reviewed at the next meeting.

Call or email for current class dates.
Private tutored classes also available.

Course Cost: $99.00
Click Here to Pay & Enroll for Class

Payable online by Visa, MasterCard or PayPal. Must be paid in full before the start of class.

Classes are limited to 10 students. Classes are held at 8500 W. 110th St. Suite #500 Overland Park, KS

 

HDR Photography Class
(Learn how to shoot and process High Dynamic Range Photographs)
Call or Email for next Class Session

In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of luminance between light and dark areas of a scene than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows. Learn the correct way to photograph images and process HDR images within such graphics software as Photoshop or in the stand alone application Photomatix.

This 2-week class meets on Thursdays from 6pm to  9pm at our office which is located in Overland Park, KS.
Assignments for each lesson are given and reviewed at the next meeting.

Call or email for current class dates.
Private tutored classes also available.

Course Cost: $99.00
Click Here to Pay & Enroll for Class

.

Payable online by Visa, MasterCard or PayPal. Must be paid in full before the start of class.

Classes are limited to 10 students. Classes are held at 8500 W. 110th St. Suite #500 Overland Park, KS

 

HDR Plaza Photography Field Trip
(High Dynamic Range Photography)
Call or Email for next Class Session

This is a hands on shooting trip with photographer Tim Bischoff. On this trip we will spend an afternoon at the Plaza photographing HDR images of the area. Students will be instructed in proper camera and meter to photograph HDR subjects. Experiment with exporsure brackets from 3 to 9 or more. It is suggested that you wish to take the HDR Class we offer or at least familiar with the HDR process. Students will be encouraged to seek out subjects and will get "on the spot" feedback.

Due to the nature of long or multiple exposures students will need to have a tripod.
A limited number of tripods can be loaned out by the instructor.

The group will then meet the following week at our office for group creative reviews of everyone's work along with refreshments. This will give students time to "process" their images.

Course Cost: $29.00
Click Here to Pay & Enroll for Class
Rough meeting time will be around 2:00-3:00pm depending on weather conditions.
Students will be emailed the week of Field Trip with exact time and location to meet.

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Payable online by Visa, MasterCard or PayPal. Must be paid in full before the start of class.

Classes are limited to 10 students.

Beginning Self Promotion & Marketing your Photography

Understanding how to begin marketing your photographic work to the public. This class covers such issues as pricing your work, getting your business name out there, direct marketing via print or emails, online portfolios. Getting started in art festivals in your area and beyond, submitting work to a gallery and many other start up issues.

This 2-week class meets on Tuesdays or Thursdays from 6pm to  9pm at our office which is located in Overland Park, KS.
or at the Green Dog Gallery in Independence, Mo. Assignments for each lesson are given and reviewed at the next meeting.

Call or email for current class dates.
Private tutored classes also available.

Course Cost: $99.00
Click Here to Pay & Enroll for Class

.

Payable online by Visa, MasterCard or PayPal. Must be paid in full before the start of class.

Classes are limited to 10 students. Classes are held at 8500 W. 110th St. Suite #500 Overland Park, KS


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