Get Better Photos With Your Digital Camera

This surprisingly inexpensive introductory class will teach you how to take much better pictures with your digital camera.

SUPER VALUE  | There’s no way my snaps will ever match the cinematographic style of Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham (featured above) or Ian Wallace, three stellar members of the internationally acclaimed “Vancouver School” of photography, but recently I learned how to get a better than average shot with my compact digital camera. For the surprisingly low price of just $25, I received two hours of solid instruction in alternatives to Automatic Mode, the most commonly used setting (and my former personal fave) on the mode dial of digital cameras.

I took the class at Advanced Digital Training School in North Vancouver, which, after 11 years in operation, has got to be one of Metro Vancouver’s longest-running establishments teaching all aspects of digital photography and photo enhancement. The class size was small, and our instructor, the school’s owner, Peter Levey, is a former high school teacher who knows how to present technical information in a way that is easy for anyone to understand.

While I had thumbed through the digital manual that came with my camera, it wasn’t until Peter explained—and demoed—the advantages of each option on my mode dial that I actually felt comfortable using these settings. Now I know which modes work best for indoor shots and which are better for outdoor ones, and how to manually adjust the white balance to ensure the colours in my indoor photos appear perfectly natural, something I hadn’t a clue how to do before.

If you’ve already mastered the basics of your digital camera, you might want to try one of ADT’s more advanced and in depth courses that cover all aspects of digital photography and photo editing using tools such as Photoshop Elements or Adobe Lightroom. The maximum class size at ADT is eight students and class numbers are often even smaller, so you know you’ll get all of the personal attention you need plus specific information for your own camera. —Carolann Rule

For more on Advanced Digital Training School and its $25 introductory course on compact digital cameras, visit adtschool.com.

Photos top to bottom: Rodney Graham, Wikipedia