I did a one-day photography course at Taronga Zoo in Sydney last Friday - awesome, just awesome. It was led by Chris Bray, adventurer, photographer and general maniac really. Who puts their body through arduous adventuring like that, without a gun to their head?
Anyway, man can he take a photograph and, better still, he has this uncanny knack of teaching photography using really short words. We love that. He actually succeeds in explaining your camera settings effortlessly. After 16 years of trial and error with my various cameras (major emphasis on the error), Chris took only one day to demystify previously hazy concepts like depth of field, aperture, f-stops, lighting, shutter speed etc in such a way that the 12 of us came away shaking our heads. Why hadn't we done this course years ago?
Have a look at his website and see why he has 3,700 Facebook friends. www.ChrisBray.net Worked for me.