There are a tonne of ways to learn photography, and collectively our Grads have probably tried them all! So then you might be wondering… if they’ve already done courses elsewhere, why did they need Click Love Grow?

Because all those other courses and classes and e-books and tutorials were never quite the right fit. And they didn’t work!!

Some were in person, or they had tight deadlines to finish lessons… and as mums, who has time for deadlines or going out to night classes? Some courses are filled with jargon… focus on aspects of photography you don’t need or want… or don’t offer any support so you have no one to ask if you’re on the right track.

So after completing them (or losing interest part way through!) our Grads found themselves still not knowing how to create the kind of photos they imagined taking when they bought their camera!

Oh and the worst bit? They’d start to think “is it me?”. They’d really take a confidence hit (we hear this all the time from our Grads!). But I’m here to tell you it’s not you. You can learn, you just need the right course.

I created the Enthusiast Course for mums – because when I was trying to learn, I encountered all the same problems as you so I knew exactly how it needed to be structured in order to be the perfect fit!

And today I’m excited to introduce you to Courtney. She’s a CLG Grad, wife and mother of two boys aged 1 & 4 from Wenham, Massachusetts where she works as an anesthesiologist.

She had a brand new camera and she just wanted to take great photos of her two boys. She tried all.the.courses and said at best, she’d take away ONE trick from each, but nothing really worked. Until the CLG Enthusiast Photography Course, which she said felt like it was made for her. She took the best photo she’d ever taken of her son to date, in the very first lesson.

You might say, she was home (well, that’s what we say!). Read on to learn exactly why CLG was the perfect fit course for mums…

Meet Courtney

I started taking pictures with a DSLR in college, when I was a photographer for the school magazine, and I was mostly shooting sports. I never thought much about things like posing, light, or clearing the background clutter because in most situations I didn’t have much control over those things.

Then after college I rarely used my camera, and only really started to break it out once in a while when I had kids. I was paying for the typical maternity shoots, newborn shoots, and cake smashes, and thinking “I have a fancy camera like that… why don’t the pictures I take look that good?”.

Meanwhile, iPhones were getting better and better and free editing software was everywhere. I remember a very specific moment where I had this idea for a picture I wanted to take of my newborn son tucked into his Christmas stocking. I set it all up and started to shoot. My husband was around and decided to snap a photo with his iPhone, and of course…

…his iPhone picture looked better than my DSLR and we ended up sharing those instead! 

Of course, I didn’t really understand what the problem was, and I blamed my 10-year-old camera. I went out and bought a brand new, mirrorless camera, thinking that would solve things. But once I got my new camera, I was completely overwhelmed by all the options of how to shoot.

Meanwhile, my photos still weren’t quite what I was hoping they would be, and I started to feel guilty about spending all this money on something that wasn’t performing much better than my phone.

 

The photography classes that didn’t quite fit

My husband bought me a class taught by these Hollywood photographers and I gobbled it up, but it was all about multiple-light set-ups in a studio for taking cover art for musicians or movie posters. And here I am trying to snap pictures of my kid in his Jumparoo and I’m like “ok, hubby, hold the bounce card right over his head!” It just didn’t make any sense for me!

The Facebook algorithm must have figured me out, because I started getting ads all over the place for free photography tutorials and classes.

I took one after another, and I would pick up a trick here or there, but it was very hit or miss.

They also seemed to be mostly aimed at wedding photography, which didn’t translate well to my messy life.

Click Love Grow was made for mums

Then I saw Lou’s free training to take better pictures of kids and it was like someone had made a class just for me.

I jumped right in and literally with the first challenge (window light, a game changer!), I already had the best picture of my son I had ever taken.

And, more importantly, I understood why it was so much better.

Photography as self care

By the end of the kids challenge I was trying to decide if I should sign up for the Enthusiast Photography Course. It felt very self-indulgent to be spending time and money on something that was just for me. But my husband was so happy to see how excited I was about it, and encouraged me to jump in.

People had been telling me, as a working mom, about “self-care” for so long, and I think mostly I just pictured bubble baths or yoga (not my style at all!) without realizing that this was my self-care!

I had an outlet for my creative energy, ways to challenge myself, and a community of other women to connect with.

The game changing lessons

During the course, the most impactful learning tool for me was the personalized, live feedback on the Facebook group. This is something I hadn’t experienced in any other course.

The way Lou teaches, you can’t possibly NOT improve your photography, and learn to analyse a photo and see where the problems are.

I read through the critiques of my photos, and then everyone else’s in the group, meticulously, until I could basically predict exactly what the instructors were going to say about every photo that came through. I have carried their imaginary voices around in my head ever since!

My favorite lesson was on composition, maybe because that was where I was struggling the most, so I saw the biggest leap of improvement.

A one stop shop for photography learning

It’s been about a year, and I have since completed the Advanced Photography Course, joined the Biz Builders Course, started my own photography business as a side hustle, joined all this year’s creative workshops, and I became a Brand Ambassador.

Click Love Grow is a true one stop shop for learning photography and meeting you wherever you are in your skills!

Needless to say I would recommend this to anyone looking to improve her photography, whether it’s for a business or just to have better pictures of their everyday lives to fill their homes and photo albums and share with friends and family. Being able to document the magic moments in a way that really tells your story the way you want to tell it is priceless, and the great thing for us moms is you don’t have to have a bunch of alone time to learn it because it’s all online, it’s self paced, you have lifetime access to all the materials, and the instructors are there to critique your photos and answer your questions even if you fall behind.

Before & After

Sharing a before and after photo taken by our grads is such a great way to visualise what you can learn in just 8 weeks on the Enthusiast Course. The first photo was a self portrait Courtney snapped before she took our Enthusiast Course, and the second photo was taken in the last week, just before she graduated. You can already see huge improvement. After the course Courtney continued to practice everything she’d learned in the weekly lessons, and the third photo was taken 4 months after she graduated. Amazing huh!

 

Big thank you to Courtney for your fabulous story and gorgeous images! If you want to see more of her photos you can find her here.

If you’re ready to finally master your camera and take photos you LOVE, our next Enthusiast Photography Course starts soon! Click HERE to get more info and reserve your spot!