Education is very important if you are a photographer. As in any profession or field, it’s important to stay ahead and on pace with current trends or new developments that can help you get ahead of your competition. Many people take this for granted and don’t take their education as a professional seriously, and those are the people that will not be likely to experience large amounts of growth or learn about managing that growth and focusing their efforts in strategic ways. As a photographer, there’s a few reasons and sections that you should be educated on and Coursera photography courses will help you.
What Should You Know?
First, you need to master your craft. There are thousands of photographers out there. As a professional, you need to be thinking about what sets you apart from the competition in your area. This could be anything from a specialty in photography to customer service to versatility. It can be anything, but it has to be something that makes you distinct from others and it has to be something that you do well. Many photographers choose a specialized form of photography and develop their skill to that. Others focus on marketing and customer outreach. The best of these will combine their photography skills and their business skills to maximize their potential.
Next, you need to master your business. This includes everything from the way you present yourself through branding to the payment processor that you select to conduct transactions for your business. Everything needs to be nailed down. This is often overlooked and in the long run, it definitely hurts you. When people look at your business, they need to see someone who is professional, has notoriety, and has some professional branding. This includes a logo, business cards, flyers, business procedure, websites, social media, and other stuff like that. Portray yourself as a company, not just an individual who likes to shoot photography. This is going to help form an image of professionality among your clients and you will be more likely to get more high-profile clients who are also high-paying.
Finally, you need to optimize. This is a big part of the reason that businesses succeed or fail. You need to sit down and do some deep looking into the analytics of your business. You can do this alone or you can pay someone to do it, but it’s something that you should be familiar with. You should figure out exactly how you get your customers, what parts of your business works best, and what’s the best way that you can optimize your business to earn the maximum amount of money possible. This is going to include strategies like paid ads, SEO, partnerships, and other strategies that give you hard data on all aspects of your business.
One of the factors that you’ll likely be looking at in each of these stages is what parts of your business do the best and allow you to earn the maximum amount of profit in the shortest time possible. You’re going to want to identify the types of photo shoots that allow you to grow as a business and earn the most profit. This is done by looking at the data and figuring out your revenue generated and time spent on each type of client. Once you identify your biggest profit source, you want to expand on those services and make sure that you push for those as much as possible. In order to be able to do this, you need to be educated on every step that we outlined above. That’s something that Coursera photography courses can help with.
Can Coursera Help Me?
We’re going to be reviewing Coursera today along with some of the photography courses that they have to offer. Coursera is a company that specializes in online learning and they have hundreds of different courses to help aspiring industry professionals achieve their goals in education and down the line, in their career. When you are using Coursera, you have access to their learning network of pupils and instructors. You can even obtain a college degree through Coursera, since they’ve partnered with over 150 universities to offer online courses. They currently have 35 million learners registered on their site with over 2700 courses and 250 different specializations. If you want to learn about it, Coursera can help you. They’re one of the most highly respected names in online professional learning along with Udemy.
About Coursera
Coursera was founded in 2012 by professors who wanted to make their content available to the world and soon, they expanded on that idea by making almost any learning content available and affordable to almost anyone. Coursera is an excellent and respected platform for those seeking to grow their skills and experience professionally. Using their learning platform, anyone can sign up and learn pretty much any skill. It’s truly a textbook example of making a huge source of knowledge available to the world.
Coursera has 6 in-depth courses on photography essentials for both beginners and the experienced. Aside from courses focused on photography, they also have dozens of classes on business and how to conduct yourself as not only a photographer, but also a person that runs a business. Both of these types of classes are going to be very valuable as you grow and develop as photographer with a business.
In this analysis of the best Coursera photography courses, we’re going to cover what photography classes are available to you, why they are important, and some other vital information about Coursera photography and how it can benefit you as an artist and professional.
What Can I Learn From Coursera?
Coursera has some of the most comprehensive and popular photography courses available online. Here are some of the best Coursera photography courses available:
- Photography Basics and Beyond: From Smartphone to DSLR
- Seeing Through Photographs
- Principles of Photograph Composition and Digital Image Post-Production
- Photography Capstone Project
These are known as some of the best photography courses that you can take online because of their extremely valuable content as well as the world-class instructors that Coursera offers who teach their courses.
Some people get worried when they think about online learning. This is mostly due to the uncertainty about how the courses are laid out and differing learning styles. Coursera makes this a non-issue, though. They lay out classes in an easy-to-understand way that make you eager to keep learning. They make the courses available through mobile devices, too. This enables you to learn wherever you are. You can even do some learning in your spare time on the train, if you wanted to. They also offer good support options for those who are struggling with the course material to get you back up so speed. Once you finish learning, your certifications are made shareable and you can even upload them to your LinkedIn profile to put them on display to the professional world.
Before you enroll in online education courses, it’s important to understand what the learning objectives and content is. We’ve gone through the overviews for the best Coursera photography courses and we’ve come up with a fairly comprehensive overview of each of them. Hopefully you can use this information to make an informed decision on which Coursera photography courses are best for you.
The Best Coursera Photography Courses
Photography Basics and Beyond: From Smartphone to DSLR
This course aims to teach you the basics of photography across a variety of devices. If you are a beginner, we consider this class an essential and also a great way to kick off your online photography learning. You can learn a wide range of skills in this course that are going to be versatile and translate across many devices and also types of photography that you may offer your clients.
Seeing Through Photographs
This course aims to teach both beginner and experienced photographers a thing or two about telling stories through their photos. This is a crucial skill because as a professional photographer, you are going to have clients that want you to convey a specific message or story. You need to know how to change your orientation and become a photographer that can look at their work from multiple viewpoints, not just as an artist. This is a skill that is sometimes needed whether you are an experienced, seasoned photographer or one that is just starting out and looking to expand their skillset and become more marketable to potential clients.
Principles of Photo Composition and Digital Image Post-Production
Taking photos is one thing, but executing them and presenting them in a professional manner is another. This course will teach you about photo composition, post-photo editing, and some more advanced concepts having to do with photography. It’s probably for photographers that have a little experience, but if you are determined enough you can learn anything, even if you are a beginner.
Photography Capstone Project
This is the final course in the Coursera photography classes learning plan. In this course, you’re going to take what you learned in the prior few courses and apply it to show that you have learned. Obviously, you’ll need to take the other courses in this learning plan first before this one, and it’s a great way to wrap up your online photography learning.
The Verdict
Whether you are a seasoned veteran in the world of photography or you are just starting out, you can take the Coursera photography courses and they will benefit you as an artist and as a business person. Coursera and their highly trained instructors and university partners are prepared to train you everything from the fundamentals of capturing photos to advanced concepts in the art of photography and their courses feature skills that would be as interesting to an experienced photographer as they would be to a novice. Through Coursera’s extensive online learning platform, you can also learn business skills that will transform the way that you market yourself as a photographer and business person and can really have a huge impact on your future, your success, and your income. In short, Coursera photography courses are a great fit for any photographer who wants to improve themselves professionally and artistically with the best knowledge available all from their laptop or mobile phone. If Coursera isn’t a great fit, check out some of our other popular photography course options here.
