The Camera Course

We love an in person class! 😍

Well done to these photographers for taking the time to learn something new! 🥳

A massive congratulations to these three photographers for completing The Camera Course Beginning & Intermediate workshops! There were some great lightbulb moments as they started taking control of their cameras, composing beautiful shots, and playing with light. By the end of the day, all three were shooting in manual mode and I was so proud. Well done, ladies!

And a special shout out to Mother Earth for providing such a great venue to host this workshop. I'm already looking forward to the next one!

In our beginning photography workshops, this is one of the biggest skills our students ask to learn.

Depending on your comfort level, you can achieve this several different ways!

Not comfortable playing with the buttons and k***s? Move your object a bit and zoom in.

Feeling a little more brave? Try out some of your camera settings (that’s what they’re there for)!

Ready to go all in? Manipulating your aperture is the key to that dreamy blur.

Which option are you going to choose? 📷

Well, HELLO!

I'm Alli, the self taught half of this account. I picked up a camera about 10 years ago and started Googling, Youtubing, and Pinteresting. I took notes on everything I found and filled a notebook with terms I barely understood.

It was a long hard road to opening my business and I knew there had to be a better way.

Luckily I made a forever friend in Tove Hansen Photography and we were both crazy enough to take a chance on each other. Three years later and she's one of my best friends, who continues to blow me away with her genius brain. (And she took this gorgeous photo of me! 😉)

Here's the best part...this isn't an exclusive club. We want to share everything we know with you. Truly. No secrets. We want to cheer you on as you take stunning photos, whether it's your first time turning on your camera, booking your first client, or upleveling your already successful business.

We'd love to hear more about why you're here! Give us a shout in the comments so others can follow your page, or send us a DM to share your story with us. 💛

Hey! I'm Tove (rhymes with Nova) and this is the face I make when I give my son a kiss but get a mouthful of boogers in return. 🤢

I started out as a graphic designer, art directed photoshoots in New York and California, and then got pregnant with my first child and that whole life came to a screeching halt.

After a few years of motherhood, I felt like "Tove" was lost. I knew I wanted to still stay home with my babies but also needed something outside of being "Mama."

Photography became that thing and I decided I wanted to take it from a hobby to a business, Tove Hansen Photography. It took a long time for me to feel confident saying photography was my job and it really wasn't until I started teaching photography workshops that I could claim that title and believe it.

In the five years since I officially launched my business, serving clients, teaching others, and cheering on fellow photographers has been my jam.

The best part? I get to do it with one of my best friends, With Alli Miller . She's the genius behind this shot and the other half of The Camera Course.

All that to say, if you've ever felt a little lost or uncertain, we see you! And we're here to help you find your way back. 🤍

This photo holds an entire story though you wouldn’t know just by looking at it.

I had finally gotten up the courage to spend a little money on myself - buying a 50mm lens and enrolling in a photography workshop. Money was tight and this was just a hobby. So I really struggled with feeling self indulgent for spending money on a “hobby.”

That hobby turned into a passion… which turned into a business… which turned into a calling to encourage and uplift others to do the same.

This photo was when all my studying and practicing finally came together. I was finally able to take the image in my mind and replicate it with my camera. The sense of accomplishment and hope was immense.

If you’ve got a hobby that you’ve been steadily working at and if you have a tiny little dream that it could lead to more… keep going! Keep practicing, keep working, keep dreaming. You never know where it might take you.

🤍 Tove

Stop right there!

We have a challenge for you. Next time you take a photo, take two! The only requirement of the challenge is that you MOVE in between each shot.

Switch your angle, get down low, hold your camera (safely) up a bit higher, just look at it from a different perspective and see how it changes your image!

Hello!! We're Tove (sounds like Tova) & Alli! Photographers, teachers, and friends. We started teaching The Camera Course in 2018 after connecting through photography and realizing there was a need for easy to understand, bite-sized (yet thorough) photography classes. Believe it or not, we went into business together after meeting *ONE* time for a quick photo session.

That's a bit about us, now we want to hear about you! Do you have a camera? Are you a professional photographer? Are you team Nikon, Canon, or Sony? (or other...let us know who we forgot!)

Have you ever googled this? We sure have! 🙋🏼‍♀️🙋🏽‍♀️

We were so excited after buying our first cameras and dreamt of taking amazing pictures. 📷

But when we flipped that switch to "on" and took our first snap, we realized the photos didn't look that much different than the ones we took on our phone. 😏

We were often fighting with blurry photos, trying complicated settings, and navigating terrible lighting, among many other troubles. 😩

Every Google search just led to more questions and feelings of confusion. We just wanted someone to give us a simple answer on how to fix this. It took years of going down YouTube rabbit holes and scanning Pinterest to finally get a solid understanding of what we needed to do. 😕

We knew there had to be a better way and that’s how The Camera Course Essentials was born! This course is a step by step workshop designed to help you take clear, beautifully composed photos. 🙌🏽

🥳 Registration is officially open TODAY! So if you’re tired of playing the Google lottery and hoping to find easy answers, we’d love to help!

https://www.thecameracourse.com/essentials-workshop

Keep it simple!

We love using items from around the house to practice our photography. Kids’ toys, lipstick tubes, a favorite mug...you get the idea!

Inanimate objects won’t wiggle out of frame, but even better: they won’t complain no matter how many photos you take! 😜

What’s your favorite thing to practice with?!

“Is it so second nature to you gals that it’s just all in your head as you photograph?”

One of our workshop participants asked us this question and we thought it was brilliant. We’ve both been making photographs for nearly a decade now so a lot of it does happen on autopilot. But we didn’t start out that way! Just check out this recent image versus when we first started.

As beginners, we were thinking through every.single.decision and often making a lot of mistakes. And that’s okay! It’s the BEST way to learn, in our opinion.

We’re sharing some of the things we’ve learned over the years in this week’s free lesson (head to the link). Do you see a big difference in your photos from when you first started compared to now? Celebrate that growth! 🌟