Ten Months, Twenty Study Weeks – and Finally, the Certificate

A year ago I found myself facing something new. I was wondering whether I should build on my nature photography skills by actually studying the subject. Not self-taught, the way I’ve learned most of this hobby so far, but by enrolling in a course and committing to a year of structured teaching. After a bit of deliberation and digging around, I decided to apply.

A year after that decision, on August 26, 2026, I held the certificate from Otava Institute in my hands: Professional Basics of Nature Photography, 20 study weeks, completed October 13, 2025 – August 26, 2026. On paper it’s just one signature and a few lines of text. In practice it’s dozens of contact-teaching days, independent assignments, feedback, redoing things – and, above all, new people.

Ten Months, Seven Modules

The course structure was sensibly built: contact-teaching periods alternated with distance study. Each subject area covered both theory and practice under a teacher’s guidance. There was plenty of discussion around everyone’s own perspective on the topic. And in the end, we’d all show our own photos together and get comments on them from the teacher and course mates. The whole thing progressed logically from the basics toward increasingly specialised skills:

• Module 1 – Basics of light and nature photography. Getting the fundamentals right: exposure, image archiving, and adjusting images for different media.
• Module 2 – Landscape, evening, and night photography. Celestial phenomena and the northern lights – shooting while most people are asleep.
• Module 3 – The language of nature and wildlife photography. Species knowledge and reading animal behavior, capped off with a visit to the eagle hide in Kuusamo.
• Module 4 – Publishing and copyright. Drone and aerial photography, underwater photography, and how to properly publish and license your own images.
• Module 5 – Close-up and macro photography of nature. An introduction to creative nature photography, as the focus shifts from broad landscapes to small details.
• Module 6 – Mammals and elusive species. Shooting from the bear hide in Kuhmo – waiting, silence, and patience at their purest.
• Module 7 – Creative nature photography and final projects. The closing period of the course, where everyone’s final project was presented and discussed together.

So this wasn’t just theory flipping past on PowerPoint slides – it was genuine learning by doing, including two trips, to the eagle hide in Kuusamo and the bear hide in Kuhmo, that meant truly sitting out in the wilderness with a camera.

But if someone asked me straight out what stuck with me most from these ten months, the answer wouldn’t be any of the above.

What Doesn’t Show Up in the Curriculum

The single most significant thing about the whole course was the network. During the contact-teaching periods, the field sessions were done together with the other participants, and something happened there that no course material can teach: I learned to see light through another photographer’s eyes, to sit quietly beside someone for hours in the same hide, and I noticed how differently two people can see the same moment as two completely different photographs.

Shared field days also taught patience in a different way than shooting alone does. When the person next to you shares the same obsession with waiting for “that exact moment,” your own impatience is instantly put into a different perspective. Those days created connections I don’t think I’ll lose just because the course has ended – if anything, quite the opposite. I believe several of these trips will keep happening as their own thing going forward.

That may be the one thing no course brochure can ever put into words beforehand: alongside the technical skills, what you learn most is who you want to keep standing next to in a freezing hide at five in the morning.

The Final Project: Where the Photos Finally Come Home

During the course, everyone got to choose their own topic for a final project, and for me the natural continuation of the whole journey was a question that eventually occurs to anyone who has been shooting for a long time: what do you actually do with that ever-growing photo archive? Is it enough for the images to sit in folders, or to flash past for a few seconds in a social media feed?

I wrote my final project on “Publishing Photos Digitally: Using the WordPress Platform for Hobbyist and Professional Needs.” In it, I went through why a self-hosted WordPress portfolio gives far more control over how images are presented than social media does, and what to consider when building such a site. From choosing a theme to image optimisation and search visibility, I also built a simple example site to illustrate the whole process.

Certificate or Journey?

Now that the paper is in hand, it’s easy to look at it as just the end result. But honestly, the certificate itself is the less interesting part of the whole thing. What mattered more was what happened along the way, and what each of us experienced and put into words.

Nature photography is, by nature, a solitary pursuit – most of the time is spent alone, quiet, waiting. Maybe that’s exactly why this course taught me something I didn’t know I was missing: that the best insights often come when someone else is there, sharing the same wait.

And one last announcement before I go: I’ve now received official training as a nature photographer, so if you have an idea for what I should do next, or what I could put all this experience and skill toward, let me know. Maybe you’d even hire me for a nature photography job?