Nicole Hill Gerulat has an amazing photography portfolio. She also teaches an online Photo 101 class, which she offered to me when she saw that I had written about wanting to become a better photographer.

I had taken a photo class in high school, but that was fifteen years ago and I no longer knew my f-stop from my aperture. (Turns out they’re the same thing, go figure.) Before the class began, I had been trying to improve through trial and error, mostly relying on my camera’s AV and TV priority modes. Now I’m fully comfortable shooting in manual.

The photos in this post are from one of my class homework assignments. All of these images are straight out of camera (SOOC), shot in manual mode.

The class structure is great because there is a video for each week’s lesson, but you can also read the information instead of just watching it. There is a companion text book as well which I’ve written about separately. If you’re looking for a course to start shooting in manual, or just to improve your photography skills in general (composition is covered as well), I’d definitely recommend Nicole’s Photo 101 class.

The only drawback I’m seeing? Now that I know what I’m doing, I want some new lenses to play with. And lenses are expensive. Must practice restraint.