Sounds excellent. In essence, this course doesn't teach you photographing but rather, how to maximise what you get out of a digital photograph. Definitely taking it, such a short course anyway. I wonder if the actual photographying is taught in any (free) online courses? I've enjoyed the little nugget called "FART for Fantastic Photos" [0] by Ken Rockwell, especially how it in its simplicity reminds one to focus on t…
> Sounds excellent. In essence, this course doesn't teach you photographing but rather, how to maximise what you get out of a digital photograph. Definitely taking it, such a short course anyway. I had a similar thought when I was browsing the content. If anyone knows any classes that get closer to the idea of teaching concepts around composition, intent etc. I'm also interested! It's been a struggle to find somethin…
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/what-is-photography.htm
I think it's especially valuable as it approaches the problem from the opposite end. In photography, you have a scene and you're trying to frame it. In painting, you start with just a frame and decide how to fill it. That forces you to start with a few strong compositional elements and elaborate from there. It gives you an intuition for the minimum needed for a coherent image.
The problem with teaching this stuff with photography, and the reason the classes you seek don't really exist, is that it's very difficult to communicate about it via a camera. On a painting, you can sketch to start and have an instructor come by and ask questions about why things are positioned in certain ways, what else you might do, etc. With photography, you have to instead select and pare down to the desired image.
Painting is about intention.
Photography is about selection.
In the end, they become the same thing, reach the same goal, but the learning process is dramatically different.
Chances are really good that your favorite photographer has a background in art, too.