Updated: Harvard - NOT that Harvard - offers a free course on digital photography

 

 

Updated on January 19 at 4:15 PM ET: Per Fstoppers, it turns out that the Alison platform below is not hosting Harvard's photography course. Fstoppers has reached out to the Harvard Photography Department for more information. Feel free to use the lectures anyways, even though they aren't from Harvard.

Harvard is offering aspiring photographers a free online course. The course comprises 13 modules and is estimated to take between 10 and 15 hours for the average student to complete. The course, Digital Photography, is available on Alison which requires users to sign-up, but not pay, to take the ad-supported course.

The modules cover a wide array of topics, from a general introduction to digital photography to an overview of software, optics, digital cameras and more. The course also covers more artistic topics, such as a discussion of light and color.

Not everyone is keen on the free course, however, as this article at SLR Lounge shows. The reasons for why you might want to skip it are two-fold. First, the material is from 2009 and is therefore outdated in parts. For example, the software section discusses Apple’s Aperture (since discontinued) but doesn’t display anything about Adobe Lightroom, a heavily-used software these days. As well, the series of videos are prefaced by advertisements.

Ultimately, if you feel like you would like to improve your basic digital photography knowledge, it’s likely worth a shot. You can always stop taking the course if you don’t like the first couple of modules, or you can bounce around and learn about whatever topic you want. If you’d like to try your hand at a different free photography course, check out this one offered by Marc Levoy, a course which he originally taught at Stanford from 2009 to 2014.

(Seen via DIY Photography)