Earn an Associate Degree in Digital Photography

In this course, you’ll build a foundation in fundamental photography techniques. You will gain control over your camera’s manual settings, learning how to balance the elements in the Exposure Triangle (ISO, Shutter Speed, and Aperture/F-Stop. You will discover how to set White Balance appropriately, create depth of field, and capture motion. We will explore composition concepts to help you make your photographs more interesting and effective and equip you for the types of adjustments photographers make to adjust to different lighting conditions. To give you experience in some important genres, you will gain practical experience in shooting different kinds of portrait photographs and sports/motion photographs..

Many people are afraid to draw, but the truth is that drawing is not as hard as it seems. If you can relax, get your mind around the task, and begin to understand what you see, you can draw. In this online drawing course, you’ll learn how to analyze what you see in the world around you and communicate it on paper. Guided by a professional artist, you will explore the critical concepts of line, mass, form, perspective, value, and composition, building a solid foundation for all your art and design work.

Have you ever spent more time working on a photo shoot at your desk than you did taking the pictures? If so, consider managing, developing, printing, and presenting your images efficiently with Adobe Lightroom Classic. In this online Lightroom course, working with a photography pro, you’ll learn how to import and catalog your images with ease, and use basic and advanced development and retouching tools to create stellar shots, taking advantage of advanced production techniques and workflows.

When photography was “invented” in 1839, the scientific breakthrough brought forth a new way of seeing. In this online photography history course, we’ll trace the development of photography from its pioneering days in the 19th century to the experimental movements of today. We’ll discuss major innovations and photographers in each period, and really put into practice what we’re learning. Each exercise will require you to take photos that emulate historical styles, genres, or techniques.

Landscape photography can be fascinating and endlessly inspiring, just like the natural world. In this course, you will explore a wide range of concepts and techniques to help you get more out of your nature photography. Each assignment will challenge you to go out and photograph the natural world, exploring compositional concepts and shooting techniques for different kinds of subjects and environments, ranging from macro and mobile to HDR and panoramic shots. To help you organize, edit, and showcase your work, the course will explore editing techniques using Adobe Lightroom. By the end of the course, you’ll have created a stunning portfolio of images celebrating your favorite natural location(s).

Nearly every photograph can benefit from retouching, whether it’s to correct subtle color problems or make major changes to the subject or background. In this online photo editing course, you’ll learn how to turn good photographs into showstoppers. Using Photoshop’s tools and filters, you’ll learn to make seamless changes, realistically enhancing your images so that no one knows work was done. Photographers and designers will benefit from learning systematic professional routines taught in this course.

What essentials do artists and designers just need to know? In this online art history course, you’ll build a foundation in art and the artists who created it. You’ll explore profound themes that have concerned artists for centuries: nature, the human body, society, religion, and politics. Through engaging lectures and projects, you’ll learn how to identify the mediums, materials, and techniques artists use and discuss the styles of important artists, art movements, and historical periods from antiquity through the mid-20th century.

Where do creative concepts come from? In advertising, illustration, and design, you need to be able generate many ideas for your clients and projects. You can have all the skills in the world, but unless you can develop creative concepts, your products and content will get lost in the sea of what’s out there. This online creativity course provides you a training in identifying the needs of each project, brainstorming solutions, challenging your assumptions, and testing/evaluating your ideas until you have a winner.

Are you looking to branch out and make a career as a commercial photographer? This advanced commercial photography course teaches you how to market yourself and gain new clients, shooting commercial subjects like buildings, products and food for e-commerce, advertising, and lifestyle industries. Other exciting areas of focus include portraiture photography and photojournalism.

Digital video is an exciting field, once described by FaceBook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a megatrend. In this online video editing course, you’ll learn the art and craft of editing videos using Adobe Premier, or equivalent NLE program. Working with a pro digital artist, you’ll learn time-honored concepts in editing, including shot types, story structure, scripting, editing sound, continuity editing, CODECs, adding text and graphics, compressing and expanding time, and storytelling strategies. Through a series of creative projects, you’ll learn how to create polished movies for digital and social media applications.

Today’s business clients are looking for designers who can apply their creative talents in ways that enhance strategic business goals. In this online introductory Marketing Design course, you’ll learn tried-and-true marketing concepts and explore how they affect the design process. You’ll gain a solid grasp of the marketing process, understand key terms and concepts that every marketer uses, and pick up smart questions to ask in client meetings.