The Best Free Online Photography Courses and Tutorials
Given my interest in lifelong learning and skill-development, I often ask people which new skills they’re looking to learn. The most common response? “I want to be a better photographer”.
And for good reason! Few things evoke the instant emotional response a great photo does. It’s what made Instagram worth a billion dollars to Facebook.
For those of you who, like me, are looking to kick their photography skills up a notch, I’m curating a list of the best free online courses and resources I’ve found. So whether you’re a budding photojournalist looking toward a career behind the lens, or just a hobbyist looking to take better shots on your next trip, I’m hoping you’ll find something useful here!
I realize that this is by no means an exhaustive list, rather it’s a work in progress. If you know of other awesome free resources, share them in the comments and I’ll add the best ones to the list.
P.S. Huge thanks to the amazing /r/photography community on Reddit for helping compile this list.
Photography for Beginners
1. Introduction to Photography and Related Media: Video lectures from a semester-long undergraduate-level course at MIT. Covers the fundamentals of analog and digital SLR, film exposure and development, darkroom techniques, digital imaging, and studio lighting.Level: Beginner | Duration: Self-paced | Always Available
2. Basics of Photography: The Complete Guide: A comprehensive resource for beginning photographers, compiled by the friendly folks at Lifehacker. Starts by explaining how a digital camera works and goes on to explain image composition, technique, and editing. Mostly in text format, interspersed with a few explanatory videos.
Level: Beginner | Duration: Self-paced | Always Available
3. Free Beginner Nikon Digital SLR Photography: This highly-rated course teaches you how to use all the buttons and dials on your camera (e.g. exposure, aperture, shutter speed and the mode dial) by doing rather than memorizing.
Update: This course has since been changed to a $11+ paid course.
Level: Beginner | Duration: 2.5 hours | Always Available
4. Photography: Ditch Auto – Start Shooting in Manual: As the name suggests, a course for amateur photographers who have been using their DSLR or fancy Point-and-shoot camera in “auto” mode, but want to learn to unlock to it’s full potential.
Level: Beginner | Duration: 4.5 hours | Always Available
5. Karl Taylor’s FREE Photography Course: Among the most popular courses on Udemy (almost 50,000 students enrolled, hundreds of rave reviews). Instructor Karl teaches using a mix of videos and PDF fact sheets. In his words, all you need is “a camera and some enthusiasm”.
Level: Beginner | Duration: 2.5 hours | Always Available
6. A Complete Introduction to Photography (aka Reddit Photoclass): Reddit never ceases to amaze me! Alexandre Buisse taught this 30-part class to 7,000 Redditors a few years ago. Now archived on his website, this gem covers everything from gear to post processing. Great for those who prefer reading to watching videos.
Level: Beginner to Intermediate | Duration: Self-paced | Always Available
7. Strobist: Perhaps the most popular resource for beginners to learn how to use light and their flashes, especially their Lighting 101 course that many photographers swear by.
Level: Beginner to Intermediate | Duration: Self-paced | Always Available
8. Cambridge in Colour: A great site for beginners to browse tutorials and have their questions answered by a community of learners. And no, that extra “u” in “Colour” is not a typo — this is Cambridge, UK we’re talking about!
Level: Beginner | Duration: Self-paced | Always Available
Post-production and Specific Techniques
9. Using a Photographic Light Meter: A course for photographers who have just started using a hand-held light meter to determine exposure.Level: Beginner | Duration: 2 hours | Always Available
10. Pixels After Dark: Shooting the Night: An outstanding talk by three-time Olympic photographer Jeff Cable on shooting images at night.
Level: Intermediate | Duration: 1.5 hours | Always Available
11. Getting Started with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5: A detailed series of video-lectures from Adobe on how to effectively use their Lightroom software to do everything from importing images to adding special effects and printing. The Adobe TV website has plenty of more great “how-to” resources for photographers.
Level: Beginner | Duration: 3.5 hours | Always Available
12. Photoshop & Lightroom for Photographers: You’ve learned to use your camera and compose great pictures. Now make them look better! This highly-rated course teaches the two most popular software tools used by photographers to process and touch up images.
Level: Intermediate | Duration: 6.5 hours | Always Available
13. Create a Gorgeous Photography Site with SmugMug in 90 mins: Now that you have some great-looking pictures, use this course to set up a website to showcase them!
Level: Beginner | Duration: 1.5 hours | Always Available
14. Computational Photography: This Georgia Tech course talks about how computation affects various aspects of photography — from photo-editing to sharing. Knowledge of college-level mathematics, general physics and basic computer programming are recommended for this course.
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