RAW & HDR Course Sat 19th & Sun 19th November £135
This is one of my favourite courses because I'm a great fan of shooting into the sun. I just love those long shadows and the fabulous cloud formations with the sunlight streaming through. HDR allows us to create photographs which are more like the image you saw when you took the shot.
Note: Please do not book this courses unless you have already attended our Beginners Photography Course first.
The RAW and HDR Photography Course is split between taking photographs and editing them in Photoshop so you will require a laptop computer, with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements installed, plus a tripod and a remote release. Please contact us before booking if you lack any of these items.
Book a RAW & HDR Photography Course £135
Thye Saturday HDR & RAW course is now full
Why do we need HDR Photography?
When we look at a high contrast scene, like a sunset, our eyes and brain can see detail in the bright areas but also in the shadows. This range of tones is called the dynamic range. Try using this simple analogy to grasp the idea.
The HDR Ruler™
Imagine a three foot ruler, marked off in inches along it's length.The full 36 inch length of it represents the tonal range we can see with our eyes. Now imagine just 8 inches of the ruler - that represents about the same tonal range as a JPG image. At about 12-14 inches that about the equivalent of a good RAW file and about 16 inches would be about the same as film.
In HDR we take several pictures and then use specialist software, like Photoshop, to blend several Low Dynamic Range images into one HDR image.
Up until the advent of RAW & HDR photography most of these pictures have tended to to suffer from dark foreground but shooting in RAW and HDR has added a whole new dimension to this form of photography. A recent student just could not believe how creative this technique was and every second comments was "this is brilliant. I wish I had known about this before now."
The Digital SLR plus RAW & HDR Photography course is usually run as a private tuition course or as a small groups. It concentrates on landscape photography using the RAW file format & HDR techniques. These intensive photography & Photoshop courses are aimed at producing exhibition quality images for print or web use and are more suited to intermediate photographers.
The date of the next RAW and HDR Photography Course is on Saturday 19th November & Sunday 20th Novemver 2011. It's helpful if you have a laptop with some version of Photoshop installed but we do have spares.
What is HDR?
HDR stands for Higher Dynamic Range. The human eye is great at seeing a very wide contrast range but unfortunately digital cameras record a much more limited tonal range. HDR is a method of taking several images and combining them in Photoshop to give a much truer representation of what the eye actually sees. If you find the landscape images your camera takes don't actually look like what you think you saw then this is the best photography course for you. A tripod and a laptop PC with Photoshop installed would be very useful for this course but we do have spares if required.
Don't HDR pictures always look manipulated & false?
Absolutely not! One of the biggest complaints about a lot of HDR images is that they look "False" or "Unrealistic". On this course we will demonstrate a several different techniques to producing realistic HDR images that do not look false. This will involve showing you a selection of blending techniques which can produce a more lifelike and pleasing image.
RAW & HDR Course Outline
The course starts with an explanation of the difference between the JPG, RAW and HDR formats before going straight into a practical photography session to put the theory into practice. We'll spend about an hour taking photographs in the RAW format before loading the images onto a PC and adjusting them in Photoshop to see just how much detail is achievable. After lunch we'll travel to another location where you will be able to take another landscape photograph using the the techniques you learned in the morning. By this time you should be able to visualise the finished image before you actually take the shot.
This picture shows the amount of detail achievable using normal photography techniques. Notice the complete lack of detail in the sky. This is because the our eye can see a much wider range of tones than the camera can record. This is one of the main reasons photographers are unhappy with their landscape pictures.
This shot was taken using RAW & HDR photography method. Notice the huge amounts of extra detail in the sky while still keeping detail in the landscape. Because we have been able to record a much wider range of tones than before this image is actually a much more realistic recording of the picture we saw at the time we took it.
Please Contact Us If You Have Any Questions
email - glen@digitalcameracourses.co.uk or call 0116 279 6906
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Course Timings
9.30 -10am Arrival, coffee & biscuits 10.00am camera settings & theory
11am-12.30pm Photography session 1
12.30 -1.00pm light lunch (included)
1pm-2pm Practical Photoshop 1
2pm-3pm Photography session 2
3pm-5pm Practical Photoshop 2
5pm Questions & course feedback
DSLR Course Requirements
Digital SLR Camera
Extra lenses - optional
External flashgun - optional
Fully charged battery and/or a spare
Empty memory card
Any other kit you need explaining
change of shoes if wet.
Please ensure you have a fully charged battery as we will be using your camera a lot and batteries do to tend to run out. For batteries and cards at huge discounts visit
Royalty Free RAW File
Below you will find a royalty free sample RAW file and a corrected JPG you can download and have a play with. You are welcome to use these files or pass them on as you wish but please remember they are my copyright.If you do reproduce them please credit me as the photographer and link back to this web site.
Download Instructions
To download these sample files using Internet Explorer please right click and choose "Save Target As" or in Firefox choose " Save Link As". You will need some form of RAW editor like Photoshop or the Camera RAW software that came with your camera.
Student Testimonials
I have attended several of Glen's courses and on every occasion I have found the sessions enjoyable and extremely informative.
I went on this HDR and RAW photography course with some trepidation, as I was concerned that it would be very technical, and be mostly about elaborate editing in Photoshop.
On both counts I was wrong. As usual Glen's calmly paced, easily understood tuition, followed by practicing the techniques, with a very useful review of the shots in their before and afterwards states.
In the most basic terms, I picked up invaluable tips on how to quickly improve the photos I've already taken. The terms "Bracketing"and "blending" sound very technical, but they are simple methods of accurately capturing the detail in a contrasting landscape shots (e.g. ground dark, sky light).
This training really helped with my understanding of the tonal range and contrast variations in a photograph , but more fundamentally, composition and the visualization of the finished picture before the shot was taken.
The session on RAW was excellent - this technique is simple, and relevant for those few 'special' landscape shots, that will benefit from some editing to bring out the contours of clouds, for example.
The editing in Photoshop was simple - the results from the session are images I would put on a wall!
I can't recommend this course highly enough, there really were some "eureka" moments, where all the knowledge I've picked up on Digital SLR photography all fell into place.
Marc Darling
Hi Glen,I just wanted to say thanks for the course, it was a great day, worth every penny. It's a great relief to now know that the expensive camera I have purchased and the new Nikon 18-200 zoom will be now be used correctly & hopefully I will be able to produce some fantastic picture in Borneo. I've recommended you to a lots of people, and I intend to see you for one of the wildlife courses in the future. Thanks again for superb day.
Craig Rogers
I just wanted to thank you again for the photography course today. I thought that it was going in way over my head but you made it seem so much easier. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will definitely be booking other courses. Excellent course full of useful information. I was thrilled with the amount I learned. Thank you.
Becky Holmes
Glen really tries hard to avoid the jargon and keep the instructions simple and understandable. His tuition focuses on getting the basic building blocks in place. He is definitely knowledgeable and he has certainly inspired me to practice my new skills and learn more. An excellent photography course.
David John