JJ Tiziou Photography Workshops

I will be holding a series of skill-share workshops every once in a while. The goal is for informal but intense sessions covering basic photography, digital imaging, and website skills.

See below for specific workshop information, and check back here for specific times as they are set- if you'd like updates in your inbox, subscribe to the workshop mailing list below.

 

Workshop Descriptions:

Photography / Digital Photography basics ( 4hrs )

This workshop will cover the basic principles of photography. We will primarily talk about technical details of how the camera works, and how to use it to make your vision a reality. Shutter speeds, apertures, light meter readings, lenses and perspectives, motion and depth of field, etc. These principles apply the same to the film and digital worlds. We will also cover basic image adjustment (color and contrast) in Photoshop.

You may want to bring your camera, but we are going to try not to get too specific about how any particular camera functions. The goal is to understand the basic principles, so that afterwards you can approach *any* camera and figure out how best to use it.

Photoshop Intro: ( 8hrs )

We will first go over some of the basics of digital imagery (file formats, resolution, etc) and then go through the tools and menu options available in Photoshop. The second half of the workshop will start to address how to use these techniques together to create and manipulate imagery in photoshop.

Documentary photographers barely need Photoshop- many of the manipulation options in Photoshop are more useful to graphic designers, people aiming to create photo-montages, design posters, and make graphics for websites.

Photoshop is such a convoluted piece of software that even a semester-long class can barely scratch at the surface of it's potential. Don't expect to come out of one day's class completely confident with the software. It'll take a lot of hands on practice afterwards. This is going to be a busy day, but we'll make sure to take a good lunch break.

Website basics: ( 4 hrs )

This workshop will introduce you to the very basics of setting up a website, the way that I know how to do it. We will cover domain names and hosting, setting up a simple site with text, images, multiple pages with links, uploading it to a server, and basic ideas for using the web as a communications tool.

We will be using Dreamweaver. Basic familiarity with digital imaging and photoshop is pretty helpful.

Warning: I am not a web designer. I am a photographer who has learned some website skills to maintain my own website, and have found it to be very helpful to be able to administer my own site. If you want to be really serious about becoming a web designer, there are probably many better ways to learn. Some of my skills are downright outdated. But if you're an artist who just wants to get a simple site up and be able to update it yourself, this will be helpful.

If someone wants to volunteer as an example for the website setup, we can start building you a site so as to have a real live example.

Further photography: ( 4hrs )

This workshop will be for those of you who are already comfortable with the basics of how your camera works. There is no set agenda, it'll be an informal Q&A session adressing whatever you'd like to cover, whether it be technical things, and approaches to specific situations. I'll ask you to let me know what you'd like to talk about ahead of time. I'll also ask you to send me some images that you'd like to talk about. They can be yours, mine, or someone else's- anything that raises questions for you, I'll do my best to answer.

If you're going to come to this workshop without having come to the photo basics one, please be sure that you are 100% comfortable with the materials covered there. (I myself made it through a photo-2 class without ever really being taught any of the basic principles- I thought I knew how to take pictures, but later getting a solid review of those basic core ideas was really helpful to me.)

 

 

 

Location: Unless otherwise noted, workshops will be held at my house in west philadelphia (45th and Osage). rsvp to jj@jjtiziou.net

Fees: The workshops are on a sliding scale with the suggested donation being $25-100. Don't let being broke stop you from coming, but if you can contribute more it will make it viable for me to continue doing this type of thing.

Additional workshop requests: If you can't attend the workshops due to conflicts, I may be able to hold other sessions to fit your schedule, but this will be much easier if you can gather other participants yourself, so that I don't have to handle coordinating everyone's schedules.

Prerequisite knowledge: I am not trying to teach you the basics of how to use your computer. My specialty is photography, I know my way around Photoshop fairly well and have some simple web design skills, and these are the things that I aim to teach. Certain basic things like navigating the folder structure of your hard drive or attaching files to emails will be taken for granted. If you are completely unfamiliar with computers, please have other friends answer this kind of question for you so that I can focus on my specialty.

What to bring: Pen and paper if you want to take notes. Also, bring some of your images for us to look at. For the photo workshops, bring images that you'd like to talk about, both ones that you like, and ones that you'd want to know how to improve. For Photoshop and web, bring us some materials that you'd want to work with, otherwise we'll just be using my examples. This can be on cd or flash drive. If you want to email me files ahead of time, you can do that too.

Networking requirement: At each workshop, I am going to ask you not only to absorb a lot of information, but also to make a few friends. We'll have you trade contact information, so that you can later help each other out, and each go on to teach some of these skills yourself. The goal is not to keep this knowledge between you and I, but to set it loose in the larger community.

Registration / Attendance: Please confirm your attendance and then show up on time. I am organizing these for the benefit of the community, without any sort of other institutional or financial support. If I set aside my time for these and then half of the expected group shows up, it'll be frustrating.

Be sure to subscribe to the workshop list for updates if you're interested:

E-Mail Address:

If you want to build a nice looking website, it's really helpful to know how to work with imagery in Photoshop. And to work with images in Photoshop, it's helpful to know the basics of imagemaking in-camera. These workshops will build upon each other, so it might make sense to take them sequentially.

Workshop format and setup:

This will be happening in my house- we've got a fairly nice open space, but it's not a classroom with computers for everyone to work with. So for the most part, I'll be showing you a lot of stuff on a projection screen. It's sometimes tricky when someone's running through a lot of information without you being able to practice hands on. It's your responsibility to stop me with questions at any time- feel free to interrupt, it's important!

Do I need to buy any software?

Not yet- I'll be working with Photoshop and Dreamweaver, which are industry standard applications. You'll be able to download free 30day trials of these from the Adobe website. There are other options, many of them free, which we will discuss.

You work on a Mac - what if I work with Windows?

No problem- everything we're discussing is cross platform, there are no longer major compatibility issues between mac and windows. Some of the shortcut keys are slightly different, that's about it.

I'd like to get some people together for a different date- what are your schedule constraints?

My schedule's always a little bit up in the air, but right now odds are I'm going to be out of commission dec 16 through most of january. The next time when I'll have some solid flexible time for doing this kind of thing will probably be in february. But if you're willing to handle the logistics to gather some people together, you're always welcome to throw some dates at me. I'd probably want to be sure of getting five to eight people together for such a thing.