Photographing the World

I have been debating getting Photographing the World: Cityscape, Astrophotography, and Advanced Post-Processing and Photographing The World: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing with Elia Locardi. The price has kept me away. Is it worth it? Does f-stoppers have sales? The sample was pretty good...so tempted.

fstoppers have put 1 full episode on youtube,

You can watch it to get an idea if it's worth it.

I watched it. Still on the fence. I'm put off by the price. Kind of hoping they will have a Labor Day sale.

rcarlton wrote in post #18094605
I have been debating getting Photographing the World: Cityscape, Astrophotography, and Advanced Post-Processing and Photographing The World: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing with Elia Locardi. The price has kept me away. Is it worth it? Does f-stoppers have sales? The sample was pretty good...so tempted.

What exactly in the sample video was pretty good to you? I would focus on your answer to determine what it is that you really want from the tutorial. It's a lot of time and cash. Overall I think the video was more of a processing tutorial and LR & PS tutorial if anything. I don't think anything explicit went into describing how to choose location, time, light, weather, very little talking about composition, etc, which does matter. Instead, they seemed to go into it as being in the environment with a camera isn't good enough, but actually, being there at the right time, planned by the season, weather, etc, does matter a ton. In review, he did talk about waiting for the right light (??), but used AV mode and relied on auto-exposure & auto-white balance and didn't stop once to talk about the histogram at creation to make sure you had a workable image file to process later. I think that's a huge hole personally. I think the processing information they go over is useful, if you're a total novice to editing in adobe CC. But, if you're just starting out for on-location landscape photography, I think I would pass, because you have to get the photo first, to be able to process it later, and I think more should have went into that.

Otherwise, the videos are very good quality but I think the information is limited in many ways, but very useful in others. So, again, how you answer really helps to figure out if you think this tutorial would give you something for your money.

Very best,

he does talk about the composition of the photograph and techniques, moving around the scene, what to look for, different focal length, camera settings and lighting from about 6mins to about 23mins.

And the rest of the is all about post processing. This is how the videos are structured. As you go thru the videos you will learn something like how to use a polarizers​. During that video they aren't going to go through the same stuff in the first video.

The series doesn't teach how to you use a camera. They do state that you should know this already. This isn't a beginners guide to landscape photography, they aren't going to spend hours talking about the different framing etc. He will talk about how he frames up the shot and then about how he would process the photo. It is about how Elia Locardi creates the landscape photos he does.

But like any training videos and books, it's hard to know if it's going to suitable and if you don't think that it will be of value then don't buy and download.

It comes down to you and how much are you willing to learn. You could find that you don't like how this episode is structured or you didn't get anything from it then perhaps the series isn't for you.

But I would recommend to anyone to watch the whole episode and not just flick through it. Don't think you can watch the video and be browsing at the same time. You aren't (no matter how good you think you are) going to learn anything.

I have a friend why purchased the videos and his processing has improved dramatically, he never mentioned anything about anything about how the photo's were taken but he does talk about the locations the photo's were taken. He also said the processing takes some time to grasp., for me the price is a little to much bot you have to decide if being able to process photo's with his style is worth it.

Thanks everyone for the food for thought.

Almost bought it when it was priced at $375 for their Labor day sale (for the 2 courses). I was disappointed when it was an error on FStoppers part and it was supposed to be $475. That set my price point, hard to spend $475 after thinking it was $375.

Since the first post I figured there is so much about the Sony a7rII I haven't touched, that I purchased Dave Dugdale's course on shooting video and Gary Friedman's Complete Guide to Sony's A7r II. I am also slogging through Phlearn Photoshop 101-301. Maybe in a year or so I'll pick up the Photographing the World series (at a better price).

Hi!

I looked through your gallery, and was taken by many of your photos. (I gasped many times.) One thought/suggestion would be to think about where you are with your photography and where you want to be. Yes, learning more about your camera is helpful, but you already have a good handle on the craft and art of photography. What do you like? Where do you lack? What do you want to do today that you cannot do as well as you'd like?

I know that for me it would be very easy to spend time and money on lots of tutorials. Sometimes a book will do, and sometimes online resources (youtube, websites, blogs for instance) will give you just what you need. Yes tutorials are good too, as I've bought a few myself. Sometimes however the best thing is to simply go out and shoot. If you take the time and money for two or three tutorials and use that to actually photograph the world (a long weekend in a great location), you'll learn things you won't get out of a tutorial.

Here are some cityscape thoughts, for instance. I love NYC, the skyline, the streets, the people. Read all you want and watch all you want about cityscape and street photography, but it's still all theory until you're on the street or across the river. For skyline and cityscape photos, I've used 500px, Google Earth, and Google Maps to figure out what and where I want to shoot. For street photography, I've had to learn how to approach people to get the photos I want. I've planned for doing photography in different locations over the city, with the openness to say, "Oh, that looks interesting," and subsequently pursue photos in an unplanned location.

Yes, tutorials are good, even when you have experience, but consider the experience you actually have already. Will Tutorial X bring you further in your photography? Where do you want to go?