Online Photography Course
Introduction to Your Canon Flash

Your Instructor
Paul F. Gero

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What You Get

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	Benefits: You get direct feedback on your photos from world-acclaimed, professional photographers. You can learn photography in this way from anywhere in the world.
Learn at your pace, with structure. Be guided by a real pro instructor. Get your photos critiqued every week. Join students from around the world. Go far beyond any book or DVD. Make great pictures, again and again!

Instructor

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Paul F. Gero

Documentary wedding and portrait photographer Paul F. Gero shares his secrets about capturing great moments and working simply and quickly with on camera flash and photographing weddings and portraits.

Gero spent nearly twenty years in daily journalism shooting literally thousands of assignments ranging from Presidents to paupers, and everything from documentary essays, to lit portraits to dynamic action photographs.

He was on staff at The Chicago Tribune (both in Chicago and in their Washington, DC bureau) as well as on staff at The Arizona Republic in Phoenix.

His work has been published around the globe including publications such as Time, People, US News and World Report and Sports Illustrated magazines.

Those wide-ranging skills acquired over more than two decades of work have become distilled into his unique approach to wedding photography that values the beauty of natural moments, simple and effective portraiture on the day and the use of on camera flash to create light that looks natural and inviting.

Please join us for his engaging and highly personal teaching style, useful and instructive photo exercises and his perceptive critiques that help students grow their skills in capturing natural moments and utilizing flash.

Be prepared to see the wedding and portrait world in an entirely new manner after taking his classes. Paul’s very popular book, Digital Wedding Photography, was published in 2005 by Course PTR and available on Amazon.com.

A Couple of Photos by the Instructor

© Paul Gero

© Paul Gero

Course Outline

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Lesson One - Intro to Digital Flash Photography
Camera Set up for maximum efficiency, exposure consistency and photographic proficiency. Your flash as a Main or Fill light? Ambient Exposure and the role it plays in flash photography.
Direct Flash - how to master and artfully craft the most common type of flash photography.
Assignment: Create a dynamic portrait of a person using direct flash (gasp).

Lesson Two - Selecting On Camera Flash Techniques
Styles of Flash. Lens choices for using flash and their impact. On-camera modified flash. On-camera bounce flash.
Assignment: Create Four images using a variety of lenses (including wide-angle and telephoto) using on-camera flash.

Lesson Three - Using On Camera Flash Outdoors
Daylight fill flash. High-speed flash. The limitations of hand held flash. Extra: Out of the Hot Shoe.
Assignment: Use your on camera flash in a daylight situation and balance the ambient light and
flash light in an artful way.

Lesson Four - Digging Deeper with Flash
Auto mode (new on the 580 EX II flash).  First curtain/second curtain flash. Manual flash. Extra: Beyond TTL - modifying your portable flash.
Assignment: Use your flash to create an image in manual mode and include an additional image from previous assignments for critique/assessment.

© Paul Gero

© Paul Gero

Requirements

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A working knowledge of your Canon digital camera and Canon on-camera flash. A Canon E-TTL II enabled camera and flash are strongly recommended. Familiarity with Adobe Photoshop CS3 and CS4 and Adobe Photoshop elements are strongly recommended (though for the class you may use any software that allows you to get your images online for comments and critiques). A variety of lenses that cover a range of wide angle, normal and telephoto range though most of the images for the course can be made with lenses in the 28-50-85mm range (on a full-frame camera such as the Canon 5D M2).

FAQ

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It's open to anyone with a basic understanding of how their camera works.  

No, just a strong desire to learn how to take control of your camera and dedicated flash unit.  

A 35mm film or digital SLR and lenses in the 16-35mm range. A standard 50mm lens would be useful, as would an 85mm or 100mm (35mm equivalent) lens. You will also need a Canon dedicated flash unit to work the exercises. Suggested flash units are the 580 EX II, 580 EX, 550 EX, 430EX and 220EX. Older Canon flash units may be used, but with the most recent Canon digital cameras, it would be best to work with flash units that utilize Canon's E-TTL II technology. 

This course will delve into those topics briefly in the fourth lesson, but the bulk of the lessons are to teach effective use of on camera flash in the hot shoe. We'll be talking about techniques for direct flash, modified flash (using tools such as a Stofen Omni-bounce, for example) and the use of bounce flash techniques. The aim of this course is to give you tools to master this area of your flash since they are the foundations for further study with off-camera flash techniques. 

Sure! I'm happy to have Nikon users in the class even though the class is specifically geared toward Canon users. The principals are universal and are adaptable to Nikon cameras and flash units, though there are some slight differences in how the tools work. Please email Paul at paul at paul f gero dot com if you have any questions in this regard. 

© Paul Gero

© Paul Gero

No, you do not need to be online at any specific time. The lessons are sent to your email and you are also provided the Campus Square - where you interact with your classmates and instructor. This is also where you upload your photos to be critiqued by your instructor. The instructors are very punctual and respond quickly.

Absolutely! Students can ask questions in the special Q&A forum set up in the course's Campus Square, or can ask the instructor via email.

Yes. We are confident that you will fully enjoy our courses. All the same, for our 8-week classes, we offer a 100% money-back guarantee before the Wednesday that Lesson #3 is sent out. If for any reason, you are not satisfied and let us know that you would like to withdraw before the Wednesday that Lesson #3 is sent, you will be promptly refunded.

For our 4-week courses, we offer a 100% money back guarantee before the Wednesday that Lesson #2 is sent out from BetterPhoto. If for any reason you are not satisfied and you let the ordering department know that you would like to withdraw before the Wednesday that Lesson #2 is sent, you will be refunded within 7 days. After the second lesson has been sent out, no refunds will be given.