You don’t even have to be accepted into Harvard to take this course.

Thanks to the internet, and the arrival of the smartphone, everyone is now an amateur photographer. But if you’re looking to step up your photography game and improve your skills beyond the pixels of your iPhone, then Harvard University could hold the solution you’re looking for.

Harvard University, listed as the sixth best university in the world in The Times’ 2016-2017 rankings, is famed for its world-class-teaching and expertise.

But if the idea of coughing the $43,000 dollars in tuition fees (not to mention accommodation costs too) that students paid last year sets your heart racing, you can relax, as you can now access a full photography course online instead, and for free.

Not only will it keep  you from burning a hole in your pocket, but you can do it all from the comfort of your own home too.

Harvard. Image by Pascal Bernardon via Unsplash.

Online learning community ALISON – one of the many repositories of higher education on the internet – is offering a course in the basics of digital photography, and features a total of thirteen modules, led by computer scientist and photographer, Dan Armendariz.

The first twelve parts look at the fundamentals of photography, from composition, to light and exposure, optics and colour, and of course, the best software tools for digital photography.

Then the thirteenth, and final, module is an assessment of everything you have learnt over the duration of the course.

If you pass that examination with more than 80% then you are awarded a Harvard diploma to print and hang above your mantelpiece to pride yourself on for years to come.

However the only catch is that the course was taught on campus in 2009, so while the basics are still the same, the software advice is a little outdated.

Thought I think it’s fair to say we can learn to live with some outdated Photoshop knowledge in exchange for a free diploma from Harvard.

Try it here for free.

Feature Image by Marco Xu via Unsplash.