Photography ~ Education ~ Shaw Academy
My blog is mostly about places I have visited and photographs I have taken along the way. So this post is to tell you about Shaw Academy whose education helped me to improve my technical knowledge, move on to manual mode and become more creative with my photography. Last weekend I reviewed Lessons 1-10 recordings and did all three weekly assignments again and the fourth assignment for my, Diploma in Photography, a four week course with Shaw Academy. I did the final assignment on Sunday and was pleasantly surprised with the high score I received, although with Will Eames as the fabulous teacher of the course, it was inevitable. Will Eames, Thomas Wood, Joe Thorpe, along with the support team, Nicola, Zack, Nicholas, and more at Shaw Academy are wonderful. Full of good spirits, professionalism and attentiveness. They are highly qualified and knowledgeable in the world of photography. I purchased my first DSLR camera in September 2016. Prior to then I always used point and shoot cameras. I had little or no technical photographic knowledge. Although I could have read every page of the instruction book that came with the DSLR camera. The opportunity to take a free months trial course with Shaw Academy presented itself. The foundation in photography lessons commenced the second week of January 2017. I was extremely excited to begin. A great start to the new year. Enrolling was simple, you just go to their website and enter your email address, create a password, choose your course and voila you are ready to commence. You are sent an email immediately with the dates and times of the Lessons. Two live recordings and one on demand per week. The final week there is no on demand. Will answers questions from students prior to the lesson and afterwards. During the hourly live lesson, while Will is speaking, the support team answer questions in the chat box to the best of their ability. Students log in to the live lesson from all over the world. So understandably not all questions can be answered during the time frame. After the lesson you can email your questions and they always get answered by the support team, and quite often by Will or your support manager, in my case Joe. Joe called me at least once a week just to check if I had any questions about the course and photography in general. Which I thought was an exceptionally high level of professionalism from Shaw Academy considering all the courses they offer and the volume of students they have from all over the world. The three on demand lessons are recorded by Thomas Wood and like Will he always asks you to practice what he has just taught you and to post a photograph for their critique. Will has a lovely happy Dublin accent and a ready laugh which made it an absolute delight to listen to his lessons. With Thomas and Will’s patient way of educating I found I absorbed the information easily. If there was something I didn’t readily understand during the lesson, I did once I re-listened to it again. You can re-listen to the live recordings in your own time. I tended to do so during the weekend and did the weekly assignment. If you are thinking about doing the course, I would highly recommend watching all 10 recordings and re-doing the four assignments again the weekend before you take the final assignment to refresh your memory. On completion of the final assignment you can purchase a professionally recognised diploma. Costs for the courses and diplomas are on their website. Shaw Academy is only three and half years old. Their mission is simple, to educate everyone everywhere. From what I see, and have been very fortunate to experience, that they do! At a very high level of professionalism and extremely reasonable costs to students. Another wonderful aspect of learning with Shaw Academy is you can do so at your own pace. With the knowledge they are their to support and encourage you every step of the way. No matter what age you are or wherever you live in the world. To finish up, I am thrilled to now use my DSLR camera in fully manual mode and I am very much looking forward to becoming more creative with my photography. Thank you so much Will & team at Shaw Academy. Best on-line educators in the world!!!
