I’ve recently started taking the NCFE Level 2 qualification in digital photography, which is making life a bit more interesting.

It’s a thirty-week course, where the first ten weeks are involved in learning more about technical aspects of photography, the second ten weeks will be based around using Photoshop (Or in this case Photoshop Elements - which I don’t mind, as not everyone has access to CS3…) and then the final ten weeks will be spent assembling a project and/or portfolio.

I’m hoping that the course will help me on some of the technical knowledge - for example, I understand about Depth of Field and Apertures, but I don’t know why an f number is called that, or how they work. By which I mean that I know f/2.0 is a wide-open large aperture, and f/32 is tiny, but I don’t know why a larger number means a smaller aperture (And I never remember that rule, either) or precisely how it affects a photo.

Additionally, the course should help give me some more motivation, a bit of drive to get out and take more photos. It certainly seems to be doing so, as I’ve been out (allbeit briefly) the last two weeks in order to take the necessary photos for the assignments.

And that has to be a good thing.