FilmPhotoAcademy.com

It’s taken me awhile to put fingers to the keyboard, but I thought I’d post a review of 4 training DVDs which have been put together by photographer, Simon Waldon of http://www.filmphotoacademy.com/

Now it’s not often that I post a review of training materials, but in this case, I was so impressed by the set of DVDs that Simon and his team has created, I thought I’d write one!
Simon has put together 4 sets of training DVDs for photographers, each set with 2 DVDs, covering the following areas.

• Creative Glamour
• New Glamour
• Creative Nudes
• Fine Art Nudes

I’ll start by saying that I’ve seen a fair few “training” DVDs in the past, and the majority of the time, they seem to be mainly a way for a photographer to spend 1 or so hours telling you how great a photographer they are, and less about the techniques they use. Not so with these DVDs! Simon has done an excellent job in producing high quality training DVDs that go through the anatomy of a photograph, from the set-up to the final image in a way that is easy to understand and take in.
The two sets of Glamour DVDs go through creating a number of tasteful glamour set-ups and lighting styles which photographers can use themselves to develop their own styles. Simon goes through each set-up in detail and also give helpful hints and tips as to things to watch out for. The explanations are detailed and concise, yet easy enough to understand for a relative beginner.
The two sets of DVDs, Creative Nudes and Fine Art Nudes are both in a similar style to the glamour sets, though obviously focussing on the nude image. Simon covers this is an elegant and tasteful manner – producing some stunning fine art images. Again, he details the what, the how and the why of each photographic setup plus any little pitfalls of each set-up.

The whole set of DVDs provides a great library of reference material for any photographer, but is probably aimed at the photographer who hasn’t had a huge amount of experience in a studio. As I’ve said, Simon explains the thought behind each set-up and also provides diagrams of the lighting set-ups (which can be downloaded from his website) as an aid. Simon does assume a degree of knowledge about lighting setups and ratios, but does explain at the beginning of each DVD what his terminology is and what he means.

These four DVDs provide about 8 hours in total of high quality training and information which represents great value for money. As I’ve said, I’ve spent hundreds of pounds before now on DVDs by highly rated photographers, and felt sadly let down by the lack of real information in them. Simon has done a great job in producing these DVDs and without any shadow of a doubt I’d recommend them to any new photographer, and to some seasoned photographers who need inspiration!

The Pose Guide

It’s sometimes difficult to explain to a new model how to pose, and how to pose easily! I’ve lost count on the number of times that towards the end of a shoot, the model, or me is running out of ideas for poses.
Once again, Simon has produced a great reference tool for both models and photographers which enables both to see, in a step by step fashion, the poses and how each one develops from the previous. The ability to be able to pick and choose individual poses is great, but the ability to autorun through the poses is a great advantage when you run the DVD from a laptop.

It does what it says on the tin and every new model and photographer should have this as a point of reference. Simon has produced a great training resource here – go buy it!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.