The School of Photography

What The School of Photography is

The School of Photography (TSOP) is an online school that teaches photography and photo editing to beginners and improving amateurs through structured video courses. The courses page says it is "Based in the UK" and teaches students worldwide through lessons they complete "at their own pace in their own time." A learner can buy a membership that opens every course plus critiques, assignments and community features, or pick up individual courses and books from the shop. The homepage counters show 24 years of teaching photography, 461,050 enrollments to date and 338,907 followers on social media, and the site says it is rated 5 stars on Google, Facebook and other review sites.

Who teaches

The school is run by its founder and CEO, Marc Newton, who describes himself as "a photographer, an educational speaker, author and teacher of photography." His biography says he got his first paid photography job in 1997 while studying for his photography degree, started teaching in 2002, and set up The School of Photography in 2012 to reach a wider audience. That explains the homepage line "Since 2002 we've been training people to take beautiful photographs": the date is when Marc began teaching, not when the online school opened. He lists a BA Honours degree in Photography, a Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) and Advanced Skills Teacher in Photography (AST), and says he has more than 20 years of experience teaching photography. The homepage stresses that the training is "created by qualified teachers and professional photographers."

Several genre courses are led by guest photographers. Trudy Kepke, a professional fine art photographer, takes the Fine Art Landscape course through her process of creating and selling high-end fine art landscape photography. The Wildlife course is a masterclass with multi-award-winning photographer Andy Rouse. Oliver Wright, described as award winning, teaches macro, and Tom Archer, also described as award winning, leads the Pro Landscape course. Lee Cooper appears in the free tutorials with woodland and forest photography tips.

The courses

Every course in the catalog has a free preview. The Beginners Photography Course is the school's most popular, built to take "people with little or no knowledge" to competent photographers; the homepage says the online classes cover ISO, aperture and shutter speed, lighting, manual camera settings and digital photography techniques. Two editing courses follow: a Lightroom course for beginners and intermediate users who want full control over post-processing, and a Photoshop course that walks a beginner through everything needed to process images with confidence. The Online Videography Course teaches how to plan, film and edit video for social media, YouTube and business use.

The genre courses come next. Fine Art Landscape Photography, the Forest Photography Course, Photographing Cities at Night, Fine Art Family Portraiture, the Headshot Photography Course (posing models, flash setups, natural light, pro retouching and winning clients), the Studio Lighting Course (setting up a studio with limited space, equipment and budget and lighting portraits), the Portrait Retouching Course, the Street Photography Course for candid urban moments, the Wildlife Photography Course, the Flower and Plant Photography Course, the Macro Photography Course (from home macro projects to handheld stacking), the Astrophotography Course, the Long Exposure Photography Course (camera settings, equipment and exposing with ND filters, from shoot to edit) and the Pro Landscape Photography Course, which the page pitches at turning a passion into a career. Two books round out the shop: the Beginner Photography Book in print and the Beginners Photography eBook.

The courses page lays out a learning path. Most photographers, it says, should take the beginner course first so the fundamentals are learned and practiced; someone who has photographed regularly for over five years may be ready to go straight to the advanced genre courses. Each lesson builds on the previous one, and the site contrasts this with unstructured YouTube tutorials, which it argues are made to win clicks rather than to teach.

What membership adds

The membership is described as "the complete package for anyone who wants to learn photography properly or take their skills to the next level." It opens all the courses and, according to the homepage list, "1000’s of videos, worksheets, lighting set-ups, Lightroom presets, raw files and much more." On top of the courses it adds critiques of members' photos, monthly assignments, competitions, a community, live Q&A sessions with pro photographers, personalized support and exclusive member discounts on photography brands and services. Members' work is shown in a Member Gallery and Member Showcase. A membership can also be bought as a gift. The site has a Photography for Schools course and a Resources for Schools section alongside the consumer courses.

Free material and buying

The free tutorials double as a trial. Recent posts include 20 free cinematic Lightroom presets, free Lightroom film presets for one-click analog editing, portrait composition techniques, five common causes of blurry photos and how to fix them, a London photo walk on film recipes for street photography, and Lee Cooper's woodland tips. A newsletter signup offers 10% off a first purchase. Membership and course prices sit behind the Join and shop pages rather than on the homepage or the course list.

The reviews quoted on the site come from learners in the USA and Costa Rica. One, from Larry Deckr, says: "Made me realize that although I have been taking photos for years (self taught) I really did not understand what I was doing and why."

Who it suits

The School of Photography suits hobbyists and aspiring professionals who want a structured route from camera basics through Lightroom and Photoshop into a chosen genre, with someone looking at their pictures along the way. The membership makes most sense for people who will use the critiques, monthly assignments and live Q&As, since those are what separate it from buying a single course. Self-taught photographers with gaps in their knowledge are an explicit audience, as the courses page says the program helps experienced photographers fill them. Videographers starting out, portrait and headshot photographers looking for client work, and landscape photographers thinking about selling their work each have a dedicated course.

The format is self-paced video, with the live element limited to the members' Q&A sessions, so learners who want a teacher in a classroom every week will find less of that here. Learners who want only one genre may find a single course from the shop a better fit than a full membership.