London Photo Tours and Photography Courses

Last weekend I went on a photography course, bought by my wife for Christmas, run by Ron & Lou Smith from London Photo Tours.

I’ve been a keen photographer for years and recently bought a Panasonic Lumix G2 which I’d put to good use in Mauritius. Part of my job is to travel to conferences, so I am always snapping away and uploading what I see, but I’ve never been really sure if I was using the camera correctly or getting the most out of it.

Ashley found Ron’s tours online, and I loved the idea of an entry level course “on the job” so to speak.

A few years ago I did a course over a weekend which had far to much theory and not enough doing, so I was keen to learn as much as I could in 4 hours while out and about in London’s great outdoors.

A group of six of us met Ron at London Bridge station and then embarked on a tour along the river towards City Hall and Tower Bridge, stopping at various places to go through various practicalities before being encouraged to experiment and take a few pictures.

The course we were on was, “How to use your digital camera”, and within the first five minutes I’d already learned about the exposure compensation dial which, if you know what that is, becomes your life-long friend in a myriad of different situations.

Ron was a great teacher, a little eccentric, but that’s what made him so likable. And as we went through ISO, white balance, focusing, file formats, aperture settings and depth of field, there weren’t that many questions because he explained everything so succinctly, meaning we had more time to fiddle about and practice.

So, if you have a Saturday morning spare and want to become twice the photographer you were, then I highly recommend London Photo Tours for an abundance of “a-ha” moments and simple, no-nonsense photography wisdom, insight and learning from Ron Smith.