About Steve Mckay:
Steve McKay is a self-taught photographer from Canada specializing in landscape and travel photography. He is recent winner of the $1000 grand prize in Verge magazines Annual photo Contest. His photos have been shown at the Go Global Expo three years in a row.
As a former international tour leader for Gadventures, Steve took people to tropical jungles, volcanoes, beaches, festivals, ruins, and ancient cities in both Central America and Asia. Constantly being surrounded by interesting places and people he became inspired to start taking pictures.
This course is intended for beginners who are new to photography. There will be weekly challenges, photo critiques, discussion, technique classes, and optional field trips.
Steve will be able to give you a basic foundation in photography so you can get the most out of your camera. His goal is to get you out of ‘Auto mode’ and give you full confidence to use your camera as an effective tool to achieve beautiful and interesting photographs. After this course you will start thinking and seeing photography differently every time you look at images or set out to take them.
Requirements: preferable DSLR Camera or a camera with manual controls
Photography course
| Date | Topic | |
| 7/5 | Photography Basics and equipment | Aperture, ISO, shutter speed, metering, and White Balance. The first class is to help get a basic understanding of your camera and its limitations. We will talk about exposure and why we want to get away from Auto Mode. We will talk about the importance of isolating subjects or telling a story. |
| 7/19 | The importance of light | We will learn about the importance of light (backlight, side lighting, and silhouettes) metering, and sunrise and sunset photography. Using natural light (windows and doors) for photography, reflectors, catch lights, off-camera flash, bouncing your flash, using flash with ambient light, off-camera flash and umbrellas, and artificial light (white balance and balancing your flash with warm lighting). Exposure compensation – metering correctly for green, black, and white subjects. |
| 8/2 | Shutter Speed | This will be a class on the importance of shutter speed. We will talk about how to use it for sports photography both indoor and outdoor. We will cover how to freeze action with high speed and how to use low speeds to show motion. |
| 8/16 | Landscape Photography | We will learn about composition, equipment, and camera settings in different circumstances, filters, and lenses. We will review Metering and F-stops. We will talk about infrared photography, ND filters, where to focus. Compressing a scene or using a wide angle of view. Panoramic photos and equipment. Basic editing. |
| 8/30 | Night Photography and HDR Photography | We will talk about various types of night photography (without a tripod and with a tripod), using bulb mode and long exposures. We will be reviewing ISO, shutter speeds, and white balance. We will talk about night subjects and also touch on using your flash. Light trails, fire photography. Learn to use High Dynamic Range to take photos and edit them. |
| 9/13 | Reflections, oceans, streams and waterfalls | We will learn how to create stunning images using water as a subject. How to photograph waterfalls, what to do with reflections and how to create interesting long exposures using an ND filter. Challenges of surf photography and dive photography. We will review some landscape principles. |
| 9/27 | Nature photography and macro photography | Learn to take close up photos of insects and flowers. Photographing birds and animals. Master spot metering, aperture and lightning of close up subjects. Focus stacking, depth of field, |
| 10/4 | Travel Photography – Portraits and People (SE Asia) | How to take interesting photos of people. Group tours, photography tours, and traveling solo. Capturing culture. People Dos and Don’ts. Interacting with people. I will break down how I took my competition-winning photo last year. |
| 10/18 | Travel photography – Places | Learn some essential tips and tricks to take excellent photos when traveling. Which gear to pack? The importance of research. Jungles, Beaches, Ancient ruins. |
| 11/1 | Black and White Photography | Black and White subjects. How to edit photographs in Black and White. Editing with Silver Efex Pro. |
Class times may change due to unforeseen circumstances*
The classes will be practical and we will take many pictures.
THERE WILL BE A CASH PRIZE OF NT$2000 FOR THE BEST PHOTO OF THE COURSE!
Price: NT$1,000 per class. Sign up for the whole course and get 1 class free.
Please note:
Class size is limited to 10 people. Please sign up early to avoid disappointment. There will be opportunities to go on photo walks or field trips with the teacher. Such events will be arranged in class to suit everyone. These trips will be optional and at extra cost of NT$1000 per trip.
Location:
182 Dongda Rd, Section 2, Hsinchu City
Sign up:
Call: 0970989594 (Derick)
Email: photography@unnagroup.com
