iPhone Photography: How to Take Pro Photos On Your iPhone vs Creative Writing Specialization

Twenty-two lessons in 55 minutes cover composition, camera settings, depth of field, natural lighting and free Lightroom Mobile editing. Reviewers consistently praise the density of actionable tips and the clarity of on-screen graphics used throughout. The ceiling is the runtime — iOS camera features evolve with each iPhone generation and some interface demonstrations look dated on newer devices.

McManus is a professional photographer and award-winning YouTuber with a Film degree and nearly a decade of client experience. Reviewers across multiple blog sources converge on the same descriptors: polished presenter, straight-to-the-point delivery and a fun, approachable style that makes even technical concepts digestible. His over-the-shoulder teaching style is repeatedly cited as a major strength.

Included in the Skillshare subscription at roughly $13.99/month or $167.88/year, the class alone justifies a short free trial — and the subscription unlocks McManus's companion classes (Lightroom Mobile, selfie portrait photography) plus thousands of other creative courses. Multiple review aggregators note that over 60% of surveyed learners report the class exceeded their expectations relative to cost.

The class project asks students to capture and share 3–5 iPhone photos applying the techniques, producing tangible portfolio work. Hundreds of submissions are visible in the Skillshare project gallery. However, peer feedback is minimal — most projects receive no detailed critique — and the brief is open-ended rather than structured, which limits the learning value for students seeking mentored feedback on their output.

Composition rules, exposure control, depth-of-field through lens positioning, natural light direction and Lightroom Mobile post-processing all transfer directly to everyday social media, travel and personal photography. Multiple reviewers note immediate improvement in photo quality. The limit is scope: the class does not address advanced manual controls, RAW shooting or professional client work.

Four courses covering plot, character, setting/description and style — each four weeks, each taught by a different Wesleyan author with a National Book Award or PEN nomination — plus a capstone project that produces a completed short story or narrative essay. The breadth is real and the Craft of Style course is singled out across the corpus as genuinely stretching. Capped because the material is pitched at beginners; those who have already read Bird by Bird, On Writing or The Elements of Fiction will find little new ground.

Brando Skyhorse (PEN/Hemingway Award), Amity Gaige (Folio Prize shortlist), Salvatore Scibona (National Book Award finalist, Guggenheim fellow) and Amy Bloom (two-time National Book Award nominee) are a genuinely extraordinary teaching roster for a free- to-audit MOOC. Scibona's Craft of Style and Skyhorse's Craft of Plot are the most consistently praised. Amy Bloom's Craft of Character is the one course multiple reviewers describe as abstract and under-delivering on its promise.

Video lectures are free to audit; all graded writing assignments and peer feedback — the core learning mechanism — require either a Coursera Plus subscription (~$59/month) or financial aid. The financial-aid route is available and has been reported to cover costs fully. For learners who pay full price for the specialization, the credential does not carry formal creative-writing weight, which reduces the return. Value is highest for learners on financial aid who complete all five courses.

Each of the four craft courses has a weekly writing assignment with strict word limits — the single most praised pedagogical feature. However, assessment is entirely peer-to-peer: your work is reviewed by three other learners, and you review three peers' work. Multiple reviewers report that most peer feedback amounts to one or two words ("good," "nice") with no substantive critique. The capstone produces a real completed piece, but without instructor-led critique it can arrive unpolished.

The forced weekly practice under word-limit constraints is the most transferable skill the specialization builds. Finishing a piece every week — even a short one — is harder than most writers manage outside a structured course, and the constraint-based approach to style and setting is the kind of discipline that carries into real writing practice. Limit is genre: the specialization covers short fiction, narrative essay and memoir only — not poetry, screenwriting or genre fiction — and offers no agent-query, submission or publishing guidance.