Spend a year developing your photography skills with Len Metcalf in this unique opportunity. This course takes you from tentative to confident. In weekly presentations and workshops you will study with Len Metcalf and learn everything from camera skills and printing photographs to developing your creative practice.

Experiential Education is a time tested powerful way of learning that goes back through our prehistoric ancestors grew. The simplest cycle goes from planing, through doing, to reflecting. This course is hands on for you. You will get the most if you dive into the year with enthusiasm, and tenacity. You will grow and learn so quickly in a supportive learning environment.

We don’t start with the doing though. We start with inspirational presentations about specific topics, issues and artworks. From these we work on photographic exercises that are designed specifically to explore a targeted idea. We reflect on this and discuss the meaning and practicalities.

Simultaneously, you will be working on your own projects. A cohesive body of work, tailored to your skill level and time. These are where you bring everything together, and often are the most rewarding, yet educational component of the course.

This is a hands on course, full of learning by doing. It is video centric, without all the reading. Perfect for us visual and kinaesthetic learners.

click on the chevron bellow to expand

term one

technical lens

In our first term we work at making sure your understanding of photography is up with best practices. We tackle many myths and common problems photographers face. We make sure you are confident and well versed in your camera craft and post processing. This term is specifically useful in sorting out your technique.

• Camera craft & control

• Lens choice

• Sharpness & focus                  

• Bokeh & blur

• Critiquing photographs techniques and practice

• Positive psychology

• Photography for impact verse photography for contemplation

• Technical verse emotional photography

• Begin to explore the work of master photographers and artistic philosophers

• Develop an understanding of the elements of composition

• The Power of post processing

• Work flow

• Colour management

• Colour temperature

Note: these presentations will vary in title and with specific requests and requirements from the group enrolled.

Weekly presentations learning from inspiring creatives.

grow your creative confidence

Without a doubt, the Master Class, above everything else builds your creative confidence. You already know a huge amount about photography, yet you doubt that you do. You may even feel like an imposter and that the label photographer or even artist are well beyond you. Do you label yourself as not creative? Do you feel blocked? Do you feel lacking motivation to create?

The Master Class builds your confidence. It explains simply and clearly the things you need to know, and sorts out what you don’t. There is so much distracting informational noise in the photographic community, that while well intentioned, is confusing, and overly complicated. It makes photograph seem harder than it really is. We remove the myths.

What matters most is the final photograph. We will grow your confidence in assessing and critiquing your own work.

Your self doubt will diminish and you will blossom with creative confidence.

We do this by concentrating on where you are going right. Positive encouragement, supportive feedback. Clear directions on where to concentrate. You will be producing creative photography throughout the whole course.

the next cohort starts the end of August 2024 and continues to end of June 2025

Join over a hundred graduates of this incredible course.

Len has been teaching this course since 2010. He had been thinking about how to take an intermediate photographer and help them grow and become a master photographer. He thought about this for a few years. It was a mental game for Len. How to facilitate their development. With a life time of experience as a creative master educator he had so many ideas. In fact when he sat down to write the first curriculum for the first masterclass, it just poured out in an afternoon. He advertised in the local paper, hired an art gallery after hours and started his year long master class. The class was so successful with the first six students, that in the next year he had 18 students in two cohorts, and was able to resign from his job as an educational specialist from the local government vocational education provider. Len has been running the masterclass ever since.

The Master Class is an incredible opportunity. Len carefully builds your confidence with your photography. Throwing out the useless so often gleaned from well meaning youtube videos and photographers supplementing their incomes with workshops. Len is unique in the photography education field. He has a degree in art with a major in photography from Australia’s leading art school at the time, The City Art Institute. In fact he graduated with straight distinctions in photography and won many prizes as the most accomplished colour photographer. He went on to complete a degree in Art Education at Sydney University, and a Masters Degree in Adult Education at UTS. Len has been a professional educator his whole adult life. With this background it is easy to understand why Len is so well suited to a course of this depth and nature.

The key to improving your photography is concentrated continual practice and contemplation. Weekly practice is only bettered by daily practice. This course is a year long immersive experience, where you dive in and explore photography at its fullest.

A term looks like this. You start with pre recorded presentations, which set the scene for the term. Each week there is one presentation about a photographic technique, idea or concept. There is also a second weekly presentation on a photographer, movement or artist, where the work is analysed, or their practices dissected, or their philosophy explained.

You pick a project for the term and submit it for feedback, and you meet with Len bimonthly.

Weekly you join your cohort in zoom sessions to discuss the weekly topics and photographic exercises. You post your work in our online community, in the Master Class group, and give and receive constructive feedback on the photographs.

You join in on monthly online meet ups with Len, and have your questions answered and your work critiqued from a masters eye.

Over the year you will complete four major projects. Each designed by you. Based on your loves and interests.

It is through this regular practice, continual feedback and support, and continual input of visual stimulation and discussion around photography, that you grow and develop.

Graduates from the program are exhibiting regularly, publishing book and winning awards. They are confidently working on their photographic and artistic loves. A handful of testimonials from them are included bellow.

What is included:

Four nine week terms over a year

Once we start we run nine weeks in a row, and then have a short break before starting the next term. Each term is designed to be complete, and it revolves around a central them. The four terms are spread over ten months. Some cohorts are set up for the northern hemispheres usual year and start in late August, while others match the southern hemispheres year and start in February. Len has a substantial break between courses. The full course runs over ten months.

Two weekly presentations

Each week in term, you are given at least two presentations to watch. One is usually a technical one focused on an element of photography. The other is an inspirational one that discusses the work of a particular photographer or artist. In this second presentation we look at their approach, techniques, concepts, and their major works. There is an underlying lesson to be learnt from each of these presentations. Each is given by Len. It is pre recorded, so you can watch it at your leisure online. Some weeks there may be more than two. Our goal is approximately two hours of presentation per week during each term. This equates to roughly eighteen to twenty two hours per term, or eighty hours of content over the whole course.

Weekly exercise exploring that weeks content

Each week you are given a photographic exercise to work on. You post your results into our community forum for feedback and online discussion. Each exercise is designed to reinforce the weeks content, and give you ongoing practice of your photography. This is to build your confidence with your photography.

Weekly peer online tutorials

Each week you meet online, and discuss with the other participants the content and exercises of the week. A community of learners soon develops full of sharing and helping each other grow and learn. The group is mentored and taught how to help each other in these weekly zoom meet ups. People who are unable to attend the meet up can still get support and feedback from posting their queries and photographs into our online community.

Monthly online class with Len

Each month Len leads an online class. This is at 8.00 am Sydney, Australian time. Classes are recorded so that you can view them afterwards for review or for catch up. This is an incredibly valuable time to ask questions and to analyse your work. Questions can be submitted in writing prior to this class, to be answered so that if you can’t attend your questions are always answered. Classes are scheduled at three per term. Twelve in total. You can check a few local times in the graphic further down this page.

Bi monthly one on one sessions with Len

Every two months you will meet with Len for a 45 minute private session. Your opportunity to ask questions, get help and advice, that is specific to you. That is six private mentoring sessions with Len Metcalf. We kick these off as soon as the course starts, so you have some direction for your personal projects. Additional sessions can be purchased as an add on for those who wish to have more individual support. After the course finishes you may wish to continue these sessions at an additional fee.

Peer Supported - Can be completed from your home via the internet

Each student in the Master Class has access to our online community and to a closed group for sharing and support. We believe that we learn best in a community of learners. As they say it takes a village to grow a masterful photographer. Our community is a positive and healthy one. Negativity is unwelcome anywhere in the course. We learn through specific and direct feedback that is sort and acknowledged. Every student is taught how to give helpful feedback in an appropriate manner.

Quarterly person projects

Each student works on their own personal project and expected to submit it at the end of each term for assessment and feedback. The assessment process is simple, did you submit something that you learnt from and grew from? If the answer is yes and it meets the criteria it passes. You get detailed feedback about your work from within the group and from your teacher Len Metcalf. People who complete all four projects and all weekly exercises will be awarded a certificate of completion.

Term one dates 2024

1. 23rd August

2. 30th August (with Len)

3. 6th September

4. 13th September

5. 20th September

6. 27th September (with Len)

7. 4th October

8. 11th October

9. 18th October (with Len)

Indicative northern hemisphere summer times above and northern hemisphere winter times bellow

Notes:

Dates and times are based on 8 am Sydney time. These change considerably over the course of the year with daylight savings times. We chose this time to try and suit as many people as possible.

Attending class with Len is not a requirement of the course. Questions can be submitted in advance or asked in person. Photographs drop boxed to Len will be critiqued. Each session will be recorded, so that if you are unable to attend your work will be looked at and your questions answered.

There will be two peer mentoring sessions will be twelve hours apart on the scheduled date. This means you can attend one in your local time zone that is suitable for you. All sessions are recorded for latter review for those that are unable to attend. Attending sessions is not a requirement. It is possible to complete this course without attending them. Though you are highly encouraged to do so. Sessions are delivered via zoom meeting software.

Private mentoring sessions with Len are at a mutually agreeable time.

Bookings subject to the Len’s School Terms and Conditions which can be read here.

Full payment is required if you start the payment plan. The system doesn’t allow for withdrawals. The system continually bills you until the full payment is recieved.

There are no refunds for early withdrawal from the course.

Please note that special circumstances will be considered.

Len’s School, nor Len Metcalf is responsible in any way for your safety, nor your actions or losses (physical such as cameras and otehr equipment, monetary as in not selling artworks at an exhibition, or emotionally) during or after the course based on any recommendations made throughout the course, or whilst completing the course.

Len’s School will make every effort to meet your learning needs throughout the course, but unfortunately we can not guarantee your satisfaction or learning.