A Brilliant Resource That Can Improve Any Photographer

Learning about photography was once confined to books, courses, and mentorship. Now, however, there are more resources at our disposal than we could ever deplete. Here's one that flies a little under the radar.

I wholeheartedly stand with the mantra "never stop learning". In fact, I watch, read, and listen to more educational information now than a decade ago when I was far more inexperienced. Being an editor at Fstoppers, I of course read an enormous amount of information and watch a lot of YouTube videos, and even if the topic is an area I'm well versed in, I'll still give it the time. If watching an eight minute video gives me one piece of information I didn't have before, that was a fantastic way to spend eight minutes in my book.

As great and as plentiful as free resources are, there is a gulf in quality with paid content. This isn't always true, of course, but if you select what you spend your money on carefully and with the necessary research, you'll be rewarded. Fstoppers tutorials are utterly superb, thorough, and give you access to the teacher via Facebook groups. I have watched nearly all of them and despite working at Fstoppers and being bias, I can confidently say that even objectively, these courses are a worthy investment.

However, not everyone can afford the price tag. There's no shame in having to very carefully consider every penny you spend on photography — it's a wise move in fact — and if you can't quite justify the money yet, but want to step up from free content, there is another option. That option is Udemy.

Typically, I see people use Udemy for learning about coding, business, web development, design, marketing, and so on. People take course in rather broad and varied topics surrounding commonly academic pursuits. However, Udemy is excellent for the arts too. There are comprehensive and well received tutorials on everything from drawing to car photography; we are of course interested in the latter.

There's currently a sale on for Valentine's day (with 3 days left) where every course is £11.99 (note: if you're reading this after 14th February 2019, they have these sales on regularly.) There are comprehensive 20+ hour course for beginners looking to kick start their photography careers like below:

For the more experienced photographers looking to specialize or hone specific skills, there are a host of tutorials with a far more narrow scope:

This isn't a sponsored post and I am in no way affiliated with Udemy, but I do support the platform. My advice for paid learning could be condensed to the following: Udemy is a brilliant and cheap way of improving your photography. It's not a replacement for tutorials like we make at Fstoppers simply because they are made by world class and leading photographers, who then give you open access to talk to them and ask questions. However, on a budget and for specialized areas, Udemy is an underused and underappreciated tool in the arts.

Where does your budget for paid content go? Do you have any resources you can share, or even a Udemy course you can recommend? Share them in the comments below.