I teach photography lessons in Wilmington, Delaware, privately. For 13 years, I taught at the Delaware Art Museum. Above is an image from a portrait class at the museum.
Before I honk my own horn, here are some links for you to explore. A listing here does NOT mean I recommend the teachers unless I specifically say so. Updated December 20, 2025.
Photo Classes and Workshops near Wilmington, Delaware with some further afield
Bronwen Hazlett, Photographer and Artist
Camversation On-Line Photography Talks and Workshops (recommended by Sally Canzoneri)
Dave Oakes of Gaithersburg, Maryland
Delaware Technical Community College, Continuing Education
Lessons.com Photography Tutors
— I do recommend Kathy Buckalew.
New Castle County Art Studio, black and white film photography
Newark Arts Alliance art classes
Third Eye Photography Workshops (Robin Davis led a workshop for my photo group, the Brandywine Photo Collective.)
Wilmington University, undergraduate certificate in photography
Recommended Photo Websites
Digital Photography Review = DPReview
Private Lessons by Danny Schweers
Subject matter is up to the student. Sessions can cover camera mechanics, composition, processing software, file management, or finding inspiration. Usually students just want to know how to operate their cameras, but some are interested in how to take better photos, how to keep track of all their photos, or how to do post-processing with Lightroom or Photoshop software.
In general, lessons are the Village of Arden, Delaware. We can meet elsewhere, but I usually charge for my travel time unless we meet close by, say at a library or coffee shop. My rate is $45/hour, for one person or many. Most students come for one session and a few return for more. Sometimes people give my photography lessons as gifts. One student signed up for ten lessons and got their employer to pay for the training.
In 2019 I was a tutor at Centreville Layton School and, years before that, I was a board member of Reach Academy for Girls, a charter school, meaning I have been fingerprinted and had a background check done in 2011 or so.
Samples of my students’ work, 2012 to 2023.
Recent Photo Tutoring Sessions
2026-09-30 — Today’s student, who owns an automobile dealership, is headed to London and to Switzerland next week carrying a nice mirrorless Sony camera he has not had much time with, so we covered the basics. I encouraged him to get sharp photos by using higher ISO settings, faster shutter speeds, and higher f/stop settings like f/8 in the city and f/16 in the mountains.
2026-06-05 —Today’s student is a civil-law attorney going to Africa. He has a Sony A7iv full-frame mirrorless camera. We began our two hours looking at zoom lenses with extended ranges such as 35-150mm. We also talked about memory cards, file formats, file backups, RAW versus JPEG, and color spaces. Finally we talked about composition and quickly reviewed four rules — Rule of Thirds, Lines to Corners, Fill the Frame, and Separate Subject from Background.
2026-02-17 — This student wants to sync her photos with Adobe Lightroom on her phone and on her computer so that edits on the phone also appear on her computer and vice versa. I suggested storing her photos and Lightroom database on Adobe Cloud. In retrospect, this was probably too much work to give someone.
2025-11-5 — This student taking close-ups of leaves and insects wanted more in focus. In general, macro-lenses have very little depth of field (depth of focus), so the trick is to position the camera so that its lens is perpendicular to the line connecting two subjects or perpendicular to the plane connecting three subjects. Increasing the aperture number also helps increase depth of field.
2025-10-22 —Today’s student is a jeweler interested in macro photography and, with a business degree from Drexel, also interested in posting better images to her website and making sales on-line. She is using Canva for post-processing but was very impressed with Lightroom as a way of managing all her photographs. In our two hours, we covered a lot of ground.
2025-10-10 — Tutored a portrait photographer again who wants to understand her Nikon Z6 camera better, take better portraits, and be more comfortable with her camera. Last time we reviewed basic camera settings, and how shutter speed and aperture affect exposure in low light situations. This time I showed her how to focus the camera manually and taught her to look for lighting that produces soft shadows for portraits.
2025-10-6 — For our second session, I tutored a woman learning to use Adobe Lightroom to catalog her many photos. She has a Canon Rebel she often uses with a 400mm lens to photograph birds. After installing the cloud-based version of Lightroom (I prefer Classic on a desktop or laptop), we reviewed the many, many whole-photograph post-processing adjustments available in Lightroom.
2025-08-11 — I tutored a retired DuPont scientist, our third session with his Canon EOS Rebel SL2. In this session we talked about spot focusing, the difference between focus and motion blur, what settings produce the sharpest images, and emphasizing the subject of photos by getting the whole subject in the image.
2025-08-05 — Tutored a man with a Canon EOS R7 camera who soon will be visiting New Mexico. Showed him how to find image exposure info in the playback display and which lenses would be best to take to photograph landscapes.
Recommended Affordable Cameras
Click here to see some suggestions to good, low-cost cameras.
LINKS
To see all Danny’s posts about taking better photos, click here.