If you’re looking to learn to program, there are free interactive online courses such as Codecademy and CodeSchool you can use. Programmer and photographer Cody Meyer wanted to give the photography world a similar kind of resource, so he created Camera Instructor. It’s a new web-based photography school that aims to teach photography skills for free through interactive videos and exercises.
Meyer was himself a wedding photographer before graduating school with a degree in computer science and taking a job in the tech industry. When he was laid off a year ago, he decided to combine his passions by teaching photography online in a fun and interactive way.
Camera Instructor offers courses on different photography subjects. The only one available at launch is Photography 101, but classes on Portraits, Landscapes, and Weddings are on the way.
Each course is broken down into a number of lessons. In Photography 101, the 8 lessons include things like Exposure Triangle, How Cameras Work, and Shutter Speed. Each lesson leads off with an in-depth instructional video. Here’s the one for Exposure Triangle:
The lessons also allow you to put what you learn into practice using interactive exercises that use in-browser camera simulators. These mini “tests” will show you whether you actually understood what you read and heard.
Creating an account on Camera Instructor lets you measure your progress by keeping track of which lessons and courses you’ve completed.
Here’s a short video in which Meyer introduces his new service:
Meyer says the service will be completely free for students. The service is supported through affiliate links for products found on the lesson pages.
Head on over to Camera Instructor if you’d like to try out this fun new way of learning photography.
Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with a Nikon D850. I do unpaid TFP and commercial paid work.