I have recently started a distance learning photography course TG089. This is a distance learning course which costs £200 from the Open University. It is about 10 hours a week for 10 weeks with no set study times which suits me as I do not work regular hours and most in-person short courses would be impossible for me.
First impressions are good. Weekly exercises are pushing me to go out and take photographs and experiment with techniques. Feedback is mostly via peer group with some moderator input. Seems like everyone is very keen on a course like this, so lots of interaction with your peers. Nice range of abilities too. Some people are producing what I would consider professional looking photographs but there are also complete beginners.
With some reservation, I have chosen Adobe for my digital darkroom software. This is a package that gives you Photoshop and Lightroom for £10 a month. My concern is once you are in their ecosystem you are tied in. Edits in lightroom are proprietary so once you have thousands of photos you can not easily bring that into another solution. It’s a subscription license too so they really have a hold over you.
On the flip side, Of the software, I tried it really felt the easiest and had the best features. Lightroom makes it very easy and rewarding to develop your digital photos. Photoshop is useful if you want to do something a bit more complicated than lightroom can handle.
I had a photography section on this site however it was long neglected. I now have a new site via Adode portfolios. Adobe makes it easy to publish from your lightroom folders to their Adobe Portfolio site CMS. Select a template, then just pull albums in from your cloud storage, Super easy and clean.