Digital Photography - QLS Level 3 Course

The Digital Photography - QLS Level 3 Course is designed to give students a good understanding of how a camera works. The course will also give a background to camera care and the mechanics of photography. The course is supported by a professional photographer and contains lots of tips and information and is ideal for students who are looking for a new hobby, thinking of a new career in photography or even if you just want to understand how to take great photographs for your next family party! If you're brand new to photography or picking up a camera after years of not using one, this is the course for you.

There are many different events where photographers are needed:

• Parties and Celebrity events
• School portraits
• Weddings
• News photography
• Magazines
• Television
• Advertising agencies
• Lifestyle portraiture
• Relaxed, home-based daylight portraiture

Upon completion of the home study courses, students will be able to use their camera successfully to capture what they see in an artistic form. In particular, you will have learned:

• Lighting
• Composition
• Exposure
• Digital image editing
• Technique and style advice for portraiture and people

Please Note: To complete this course students will need a good quality digital camera and image editing software:

Digital Camera:

We recommend a Digital SLR camera or DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) for completing this course. If you do not own one, you can use a digital compact camera provided it is not fully automatic. If you are using a smaller mid-upper range compact camera, it should contain a range of shooting modes that give you some manual control over the exposure. Mobile phones and iPads will not be suitable for this course. As good as some of these are for simple images, their limited functionality and lack of user control make them too limited for anyone serious about their photography, and their limitations will come to the fore under challenging lighting situations or when you need to take control of exposure or depth of field.

Any camera you use for this course should have a range of shooting modes, and some element of Manual control over exposure. The camera should have an Exposure Compensation function which will allow the user to manually adjust the brightness or darkness of an image.

Image Editing Software:

It is important that the image editing software you use with your course should allow you to work with Selections and Layers. We would recommend Adobe Photoshop for this. This does not have to be the latest version of the software and older versions will be fine for the course. If you do not own this software then earlier versions of Photoshop will be available for a fraction of the price of the most up-to-date version. Some of the menu instructions in the coursework will relate to Photoshop although other suitable software packages would be: Adobe Elements, Gimp or Gimpshop (Free Image Editor), Affinity Photo, Photoline, and PhotoDirector5.

On successful completion of this course students will receive a QLS Level 3 Endorsed Certificate of Achievement.

There are no particular entry requirements for this course, so students can sign up providing they are comfortable studying at a Level 3 standard.

You can start this course at any time, and you would be registered for a one-year period. You also have access to a personal tutor who can be contacted by email. Your tutor is available to assist with any queries and to mark your assignments for the Awarding Body.

As the course is self-study, you can complete it as quickly as you like. Support extensions are available if students do not complete the course within the one-year period.

This course is supplied as hard copy paper-based materials. You will receive an A4 ring bound course folder which will include all of your course notes and assignments and there is a separate study guide which should be read before starting the course and explains about support, the required format of assignments and how to submit assignments for assessment. We find this format works well for this particular course as you don't have to be on a computer to work through the notes and you get to keep the course materials after you have completed your study if you need to refer back to them.

We do also offer the option of an online version of the course notes which can be purchased for an additional £36.00 for learners who prefer computer-based learning or are travelling and need access to their course notes. This option is available at the checkout when ordering the course.

The hard-copy course materials are dispatched using a next working day courier service where available and the online course notes are usually issued within 24 hours of processing an application.

If learners would prefer an online only version of the course notes then please contact us for information on how to order this.

You will be assessed on your coursework which is detailed in the course materials. There are 12 tutor marked assignments (TMAs) in the course which contain a mixture of written and practical photography work. There are also over 20 self assessment exercises which students can follow to help build their knowledge about significant areas of photography in a fun and challenging way.

At the end of this course, successful learners will receive a QLS Level 3 Endorsed Certificate of Achievement from the Quality Licence Scheme and a Learner Unit Summary (which lists the components the learner has completed as part of the course).

The Quality Licence Scheme is part of the Skills and Education Group, a charitable organisation that unites education and skills-orientated organisations that share similar values and objectives. With more than 100 years of collective experience, the Skills and Education Group’s strategic partnerships create opportunities to inform, influence and represent the wider education and skills sector.

The Skills and Education Group also includes two nationally recognised awarding organisations; Skills and Education Group Awards and Skills and Education Group Access. Through our awarding organisations we have developed a reputation for providing high-quality qualifications and assessments for the education and skills sector. We are committed to helping employers, organisations and learners cultivate the relevant skills for learning, skills for employment, and skills for life.

Our knowledge and experience of working within the awarding sector enables us to work with training providers, through the Quality Licence Scheme, to help them develop high-quality courses and/or training programmes for the non-regulated market.

The course has been endorsed under the Quality Licence Scheme. This means that Kendal Publishing has undergone an external quality check to ensure that the organisation and the courses it offers, meet defined quality criteria. The completion of this course alone does not lead to a regulated qualification* but may be used as evidence of knowledge and skills gained. The Learner Unit Summary may be used as evidence towards Recognition of Prior Learning if you wish to progress your studies in this subject. To this end the learning outcomes of the course have been benchmarked at Level 3 against level descriptors published by Ofqual, to indicate the depth of study and level of demand/complexity involved in successful completion by the learner. 

The course itself has been designed by Kendal Publishing to meet specific learners’ and/or employers’ requirements which cannot be satisfied through current regulated qualifications. The Quality Licence Scheme endorsement involves robust and rigorous quality audits by external auditors to ensure quality is continually met. A review of courses is carried out as part of the endorsement process.

You can find more information on level descriptors from our Certification Overview Page.

*Regulated qualification refers to those qualifications that are regulated by Ofqual / CCEA / Qualification Wales