City Lit photography: developing practice and portfolio

What is the course about?

Using a wide range of techniques you will explore commercial and experimental approaches to photography in our fully equipped photographic studios, facilitated by a team of experts in the field.
You will gain and improve your skills in composition, exposure and lighting, and explore different genres of photography.
You will deepen your understanding of visual storytelling, commercial practice and creative briefs. You will continue to improve your skills in digital image capture and processing while exploring specialist genres such as architecture and panoramic photography. You will learn about project development, experiment with digital printing and continue to build a photographic portfolio of your work.
Our professional studio is equipped with a full studio lighting suite, Apple Mac computers, scanners, high quality A2 digital printers and professional software, such as Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture One and PtGui (Panoramic image stitching software).

What will we cover?

- Advanced manual camera skills revisit
- Light metering and exposure control
- Digital image capture and editing
- Framing, composition and colour
- Light sources, including daylight, flash and studio lighting
- Generating creative ideas, project development, editing and sequencing
- Showcasing, including print and online portfolios.

What will I achieve?
By the end of this course you should be able to...

- Produce photographs to a high level of technical proficiency
- Confidently apply exposure settings and lighting techniques as part of the creative process
- Use composition and colour to create visually interesting imagery
- Apply relevant photographic techniques to realise creative ideas
- Plan, develop and edit a project
- Process, edit and print digital image files
- Produce a diverse portfolio of high-quality photographs.

What level is the course and do I need any particular skills?

This course is for relatively advanced practitioners of photography. It is a natural follow on course from the 120 hour City Lit photography projects (VY844 & VY878). You should be competent using the manual settings on your camera and arrive with willingness, curiosity and a high level of commitment to produce portfolio quality images of a self-set project.

You should have a basic knowledge and competence in using computers, including creating, saving and retrieving files. You will be encouraged to have an online presence and can gain support for this on web courses offered throughout the term.

How will I be taught, and will there be any work outside the class?

The course will be led by a course leader and course tutor team who are all professional photographers within various fields. You will be taught through workshops, short lectures and practical exercise. Individual assistance will be provided throughout the course alongside group presentations and critiques.
The City Lit photography projects: developing studio practice course puts equal emphasis on technical skills and ideas-based thinking and you will be expected to develop your photographic project independently outside the taught hours of the course.
You will also have access to Google classroom as our designated Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) where you will be able to upload images for crits, access hand-outs and briefs and collaborate with peers outside of course hours.

Are there any other costs? Is there anything I need to bring?

You must have access to a camera that allows full manual control (e.g. any digital SLR camera). The course will emphasise digital techniques. If you intend to use film, you should be prepared for the substantial film and processing costs. At City Lit, you will have access to a range of digital SLR cameras, tripods, lenses, speedlights, studio flash, scanners and printers which you are welcome to use during the hours of the class. We cannot lend equipment between classes.
We advise all students to have a notebook (A5) to support the recording of information and ideas.

Student Discount
This is not a requirement of the course but when you enrol on a course at the City Lit, you are entitled to student discount on Adobe Creative Cloud
Please see the link below:
Please note:
- You will need to create an Adobe account using your City Lit email address which includes your student number. (This is in the format 123456@student.citylit.ac.uk)
- You can access your City Lit email through your supplied Office 365 account.
- When your course finishes and you no longer have access to your student email, the software will continue to function on the installed machine for the remainder of the annual subscription.
- At renewal, you will need to create another Adobe account using your personal email.
- The Adobe account is not accessible to City Lit and technical support is extremely limited as a result.
- It is recommended that you do not use the online storage available on Adobe accounts as access to your work is subject to the continuation of your subscription.
- Adobe sales can be contacted on 0800-028-0148

When I've finished, what course can I do next?

City Lit has a wide range of practical and theoretical photography, video, animation and image software courses. For more details please visit our website.