Workflow courses in London based on Lightroom—March offer

As I mentioned in the previous post, we’d like to open up our digital workflow training courses to a wider audience. At the same time, we still want to do what we do best, which is to get you up to speed with your image processing workflow, in your own working environment. So we’re going to run an experiment this month. If it’s successful, it will stay but if not, this will be the only time you’ll see an offer like this. (From us, at least.)

March offer for emerging photographers and amateurs

For March 2010, we’re going to accept a maximum of four bookings for one-on-one workflow tuition from photographers who aren’t established professionals. For each of these four bookings in March, we will charge just £380 plus VAT for a complete two-day digital workflow and post-processing course. That price is for photographers based in London and it gets you a one-on-one training course, built for you and delivered at your premises. The training is based on Adobe LIghtroom and you can get an idea of an example course by looking at these notes, which were for a group course we put together earlier in the year.

Let’s talk first—for free

Each course is tailored for you, after we speak over the phone, though the notes for the group course do give you an idea of typical content. The purpose of the first phone call is to prioritise topics. That helps us devote more time during the course to the things that matter most to you. We find out in advance what you’re struggling with or have questions about and we’ll focus on those areas. It could be the quality or the look of final images, print quality, exporting and sharing, the speed and efficiency of your post-processing, colour management, the ability to file and retrieve your work easily or something completely different. We’ll learn a lot during that first phone call and customise the course based on what you tell us.

The phone call is free and there is no obligation to book a course after we’ve spoken. (We hope you do decide to book a course but we don’t hassle you if you don’t!) During the calls, we get to hear what photographers are struggling with; you get to talk to us and decide whether you think you’d want to take a two-day course with us. And if you go ahead, you’ll get a course that’s made for you.

Where?

The courses can be held anywhere that you have access to your computer—usually your home or office. If you use a laptop, it could be any place where we can work quietly and without distractions. (For a very reasonable cost, we can arrange a small training room in central London.)

Leave a week between the two training days

As always, we recommend leaving a one-week gap between day one (where there’ll probably be lots of information to digest) and day two, which is more advanced but is best completed when you feel comfortable with that first day’s training. Use what you’ve learned on day one for a week and become really familiar with it. You then get the most out of day two. So for a whole week, you’ll be using Lightroom on your own images and you’ll get plenty of practice with the new techniques and workflow. A week later, on day two of the course, you’ll get all your questions answered before we build on that knowledge to get into the advanced stuff. (During that first week, you’ll build up plenty of questions.)

Who’s eligible?

How do we decide whether you’re an established professional and therefore not eligible for these prices? Well, if you’re making a living from your photography, you’re an established professional. If you’re a serious amateur thinking of turning pro, you (and three others) get these lower prices. Same with fine-art photographers who aren’t yet earning enough to rely on that income—you qualify.

Collectives, clubs and groups

If you represent a group of photographers who might be interested in digital workflow training, we’d be delighted to offer you group training or one-to-one training for each photographer individually. We’d be happy to offer special rates to reflect the numbers. Get in touch and we can meet up for a chat first to discuss what exactly you’re looking for.

So what about pricing for professional, full-time photographers?

We have good news for established professional photographers, too—we’ll be putting new standard prices on the site later this week. If we’ve spoken previously, visit the site on Friday and you’ll see new prices.

Lightroom courses for photographers outside London?

If you’re outside London, the same rates apply but we’ll need to charge something towards travel. We don’t make money on travel (it’s charged at cost) and so far, have never needed to charge for travel time so drop us a line and we’ll happily work something out.

Best before end 31 March

We’re going to run this offer during March and see what response we get—we won’t repeat it unless things go well this month. So if you’re interested in mastering those workflow and post-processing skills, now’s the time to book.

Requirements

You need a computer running Adobe Lightroom 2 and ideally, a version of Photoshop or something similar. It helps to have your camera with you during the course and a good selection of your own images. Most of what we do is done within Lightroom but we do cover Photoshop integration. Healing, cloning and work that involves working on detailed selections is also best done in Photoshop, as well as panoramas and HDR work. Of course, how much time we spend on Photoshop is up to you—it’s your course. We’ll decide in advance what to aim for, during and after our phone conversation.

We turn up with a laptop running Lightroom 2.6 and Photoshop CS4 but you will need your own system to work on—you need to be able to walk away with the environment we’ve set up and the work we’ve done so you can continue where we left off.

Before we speak on the phone, try to list on paper all the reasons that you’re looking at post-processing training on Lightroom. Be sure to include things that you are finding particularly difficult, irritating or slow at the moment.

Payment

We accept payment by cheque, PayPal or bank transfer. You pay half the total cost before the first day’s training, and the remaining half before the second day. You get a full VAT invoice. Before any of that, though, book your free phone call and decide if this is the right course for you. If you are unhappy with the course at any stage, write and tell us why and you get a full refund—no further questions asked.

Next step

The next step is to let us know you’re interested and would like to arrange a phone call. We’ll suggest a few times, you pick one and we’ll call you. To get started, send an e-mail to develop@shootraw.co.uk with the subject “March Offer”. In the message, tell us what you’re looking for and how best to get hold of you and we’ll get in touch. (We never share our customers’ details with any other organisation.) If you’re among the first four people to qualify, you get to book your course this month—if not, we’ll put your name on a reserve list and we’ll arrange your booking in April.

Spread the word

If you know someone else who might be interested in a one-on-one Lightroom course this month, please pass on the link. You can copy this shortened version of the URL:

http://bit.ly/lightroom-london

Or click here to send the URL to a friend using your usual e-mail application. We appreciate your support—thank you!