Advanced Photography Course

Master the Art of Landscape Lighting

November 9-12, 2024 

Register for AP

The Advanced Photography Course (AP) is a new educational offering from the International Landscape Lighting Institute (ILLI).  This course is designed to complement the Intensive Course (IC) and will allow the Attendees to further their skills as a landscape lighting professional through photography.  While the IC trains professionals on landscape lighting design, this course is specifically aimed toward the landscape lighting designer who wishes to improve their photography skills in order to enable them to document their lighting projects more effectively.  With these new skills, the lighting designer should be able to create higher quality images for marketing materials; as well as document project details that help convey lighting design principles and fixture applications for future projects.  After this course, Attendees should be able to start creating a portfolio of high quality photographs that can be used with prospective clients to demonstrate the type of work they can do, possibly reducing the need for on-site demonstrations.

The Advanced Photography (AP) course is an immersive 3 night/ 3 day course and is instructed by a small team of Mentors – a minimum of a 4 to 1 ratio of Attendee to Mentor.  This course will concentrate on the technical aspects of quality Landscape Lighting Photography and Attendees will be able to hone their skills in a variety of outdoor settings.  Attendees will have the unique opportunity to be able to utilize the presentations of the concurrent IC course as subjects for their fieldwork.  This will provide an opportunity to be able to learn photography on a variety of quality landscape lighting installations.  As the courses are concurrent, AP Attendees will also be able to network and interact with the Attendees IC class for some of the social networking events.

Our Mentors will guide the Attendees through a series of lecture presentations and demonstrations and assisted hands-on field time.  Interactive classroom lectures will start at 8:00 am and the fieldwork continues until at least 10:00pm.  Attendees will learn techniques and settings that are necessary to create high quality images as well as reviewing and discussing Lens and Camera equipment, editing tricks, and processing software.  This course includes approximately 16 hours of classroom instruction and 9 hours of in field.

The learning objectives for the AP course are:

• An understanding of what images you need to capture for your business & File Management
• Acquire a basic foundational understanding for creative compositions in architectural and landscape lighting photography.  
• A complete understanding of camera basics (The photographic triangle, white balance and image sizes)
• How to use lenses creatively for different lens effects and compositional tricks
• Understanding the workflow for a full night shoot & compensating for varying conditions
• Understanding the software options for post processing, including useful plug-ins
• An understanding of the post processing workflow
• Knowing how to bracket exposures and manually blend images so you can photograph all night.
• An understanding of how to prepare and protect your images for web and print use.
• Capture and edit your own images from the IC class for further practice.

We will have plenty of hands on, Mentor assisted field exercises throughout the class to practice and reinforce the principles learned in class.

Upon completion of the AP course, you will have the foundation and knowledge to start on your way to capturing great landscape lighting images. You will take with you a better understanding of your own camera equipment, and its potential, and will have developed the technical skills and expertise with photo editing software.  After the course your ability to have high quality landscape lighting photographs in your portfolio should be at your fingertips!  ILLI’s AP may even give you the tools and confidence to expand into other genres of photography as well.

Prerequisites

• Successful completion of the Intensive Course.  Professional photographers will be considered on a case by case basis.

• Own or be able to acquire the necessary equipment for this type of specialized photography.

• Have taken time to understand the basic functions, controls, and menu navigation for their particular camera.  Attendees should not be trying to figure out basic buttons and dials during class.*

• Have a current subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud’s version of Photoshop and Camera RAW as this will be the primary post processing software we use.  While not required, it is recommended to take a basic photoshop class to familiarize yourself with the tools and workspace before class- this will help you a lot.

• Have a laptop or tablet with photoshop loaded and ready to use.  Please note that laptops offer more functionality for post-processing than tablets, which may be somewhat limiting, and you may not get the full toolset and experience from Adobe with a tablet.

*The instructor will review what camera functions you should be comfortable with in our welcome video prior to actually arriving at the venue.

Advanced Photography Course

November 9-12, 2024 

Register for AP