TGordon, welcome to the Forum and to Photography in general. You will find that it can be a very addicting, yet interesting hobby, at least for me it is. You do have to watch that you don't get GAS - Gear Acquisition Syndrome - an affliction that I feel a lot of us have
. In my opinion, learning how to
use your camera and learning how to
make good photographs are two different things. You can learn how to use your camera you by reading the manual and then trying out all the features of your camera - read the manual again and try out the different things on your camera, etc. I don't think that you need to take a course or even go online to learn how to
use your camera.
Learning how to
make good photographs is quite a different thing, at least for me it is. This aspect of photography is all about composition and is quite
independent from the camera that you have. To make good images, you will probably be best off going online and looking at sites that talk about rules of composition - well maybe not rules exactly, but more like guidelines, although some folks still call them rules. Aspects of composition such as rule of thirds, use of lines, form, symmetry and patterns, framing, leading lines, balance, negative space, etc. One site to start with for this aspect of your imaging is -
Photography Composition Articles Library You can also look at any of the following sites:
10 Top Photography Composition Rules | Photography Mad
Photography Composition
Digital Photography Tips and Tutorials
As well, there is a sequence of sites by Ron Bigelow starting here:
Advanced Composition -- Part I. The link to the next site is at the bottom of this one and the link to the third site is at the bottom of the second one.
Once you have the general aspects of composition in hand, then there are always the articles/web sites that deal with very specific aspects of photography, e.g., landscape photography, macro photography, wildlife photography, etc. These you can find by googling the appropriate topic on the web, for example -
4 Rules of Composition for Landscape Photography and
The Master Guide for Wildlife Photographers: Wildlife compositions . Very often, these subject-specific sites have simply taken the general rules that you will find in some of the first sites noted above and applied them to a specific topic or topics - you get the idea. Anyway, I hope this helps a bit - any further questions, post back here and I am sure you will find some further answers to your questions.
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WesternGuy
