A Peek Behind The Scenes

June 2025 marks the four year anniversary of the new John Greengo Photography shop offering photography, camera courses, and photography tours. This milestone makes it a good time to communicate directly with you about where we are and where we are heading.

To get straight to the point – business is going well, enough so that we are experiencing a number of growing pains. It’s what I like to call a ‘good problem’.

Canon EOS R1, RF 14-35MM F/32 L IS USM @ 32MM | F/10 | 30 SEC | ISO 100

The back story

A bit of history for those of you new to John Greengo Photography. My online teaching actually starts back in 2010 with a small startup called CreativeLive. Over the course of a decade I created a large number of courses that were sold on their website. I created and conducted the courses and they handled the filming and sales.

In June 2021 I opened my own shop that houses all of my new content. All production of the new courses is handled in-house: creation, filming, editing, sales, marketing.

So not really a 4 year anniversary but a 15 year anniversary!

Canon EOS R5 II, RF 100-300MM F/2.8 L IS USM @ 270MM | F/2.8 | 1/3200 SEC | ISO 100

More and more courses

For the first several years of this operation I knew that we needed a lot of courses. I wanted courses for every camera and every aspect of photography that I felt confident in teaching. The problem is maintaining quality while increasing quantity. Over the last few years we’ve worked hard and brought forth 42 courses, and it didn’t come with any sacrifice to quality. To this day we maintain a 4.86 star rating with over 2600 reviews submitted.

More classes are coming soon including for the Canon R1, Fujifilm GFX100RF and Nikon Z5II, which are all in various stages of production. As mentioned before, I’m trying to build time to create more in-depth courses on focus and composition, as well as other topics when I can get to them.

As the modern camera has evolved and become more complicated, my courses have needed to increase in length to properly cover the operations. Way back in the early 2010’s I was creating classes for cameras like the Nikon D7000 and D800 and the Canon 60D and 5DIII. Those classes required about 200 pages in my presentation program and resulted in a course that was about 3-4 hours. Current courses now require about 1000 pages of programing and have resulted in a final course length of 9 to 12 hours.

Canon EOS R1, RF 14-35MM F/11 L IS USM @ 14MM | F/11 | 25 SEC | ISO 100

One of the most clear and quantifiable areas of complexity is in the menu system. The Canon 5D Mark III (introduced in 2012) featured about 207 items in the menu. The more modern Canon R5 Mark II (introduced in 2024) has upward of 514 menu options. While not every menu option needs a full explanation, working through all that information takes time.

We call our newer camera classes “Complete Camera Guides” and we want to stay true to that name.

I try to focus spending more time on new and different features. As certain technologies become more common in the industry I streamline my explanations so that we can focus on new material. However, I know that in every course someone is watching where there is lots of new information and I try to make that material as accessible as possible to understand.

It’s a difficult balance trying to teach to the new-comer and the old-hand at the same time; so thanks for your patience and understanding while I navigate the dangerous waters of a mixed audience.

Canon EOS R1, RF 100-500MM F/7.1 L IS USM @ 500MM | F/7.1 | 1/125 SEC | ISO 800

Our life in the clouds

One of the keys for these courses to work for both you and I, is cloud storage. Once a class has been created, filmed, and edited, we upload it to our cloud storage site which is where you access it when you want to stream or download the video.

Every time you download a video from the course, or watch via streaming, there is a cost to us for you to access that data. In fact we get a very detailed bill for all the downloading and streaming that all of our customers do for the previous month. The money that you’ve paid for your course entitles you access to your course. We offer lifetime access, as long as you and we are around, you can have access to any course that you’ve paid for.

Fujifilm GFX100 II, GF 30MM F/5.6 T/S | F/22 | 1/6 SEC | ISO 80

Now think what might happen if a computer, or person, tried to download a course over and over for a hundred times, or maybe a thousand times. In short, we’d get a very large bill. To prevent an accident like this that could put us out of business we limit the number of downloads an individual can make.

We believe most everyone will download all sections of the course that they purchased. It’s possible that there could be an connection issue and some sections will need to be downloaded a second time. It’s also reasonable that someone might lose their copy of the course or forget where it is and they will download the class again. Each download costs money, but we expect this and have budgeted for each customer to download the class a reasonable number of times, and that’s what usually happens, but not always.

Canon EOS R1, RF 24-70MM F/11 L IS USM @ 24MM | F/11 | 1/8 SEC | ISO 100

From time to time customers exceed the limits we’ve placed on accessing the course. In most every case the customer didn’t realize what was going on. If the download limit is reached, access to the course will be automatically blocked. You will need to contact us to have your account reset, and we’ve done that many times.

In some cases where poor internet connections exist, one might click to download, and when it doesn’t seem to work, they click again, again and again. Each one of those clicks may count as a full download on our final bill. In other cases, those unfamiliar with downloading video files might be unsure where to locate them on their computer. They will download a class, and if it doesn’t show up on the desktop, they just download it again. Each one of those clicks will count as a full download.

The ideal situation is when someone downloads all sections of the course and stores them on their computer or local drive. Pro tip – download one section at a time before starting the next download, many problems can be avoided by this technique. With all course videos on a local drive you can access all the sections and PDFs of the course no matter your current internet connection.

We’ve taken great steps to creating the highest quality video while also maintaining the smallest file size so that you can store all course files with the least amount of storage space. By only downloading the class once, it is the most efficient use of the internet with the lowest cost financially and environmentally.

Canon R5 Mark II, RF 100-300MM F/2.8 L IS USM @ 144MM | F/2.8 | 1/800 SEC | ISO 100

A shock to our cloud system

We recently received notice from our cloud storage provider that they were raising rates – by an effect of 5x. We’ll spare you the details of the agreement, but our already somewhat high rates were going to go through the roof and threaten our entire operation. Working with our web operation team we’ve made some changes to our cloud storage, some of which you may notice the next time you access a course.

We’ve tried to maintain as much of our current system as we could. We know it’s not perfect, but it’s what we’ve all learned to work with, so we thought it best not to change it too much. When you access your courses you will now see separate listings for each class section, one for download, and one for streaming – essentially double the number of files that you actually need. Click on the one you prefer – either download or stream; they’re identical files.

This is a minor change for you, but we’ve had to work long and hard, behind the scenes to keep things running as smoothly as we could at a reasonable cost to you. We did have a few disruptions with access to our courses during this change over and we apologize for this to everyone. We’d also like to thank you for your support, patience, and understanding while we go through a number of growing pains.

We believe we have everything back in place at this time and access is fully restored for all customers. If you experience any issues with our shop or downloading/streaming service, please let us know. We want everyone to have easy and secure access to their courses.

Canon EOS R1, RF 14-35MM F/22 L IS USM @ 26MM | F/22 | 0.4 SEC | ISO 100

User experience

Our current system for downloading or streaming courses you have purchased is satisfactory in our opinion. Overall it’s pretty reliable and easy to navigate once you’ve been through the process once or twice. However there are a number of issues we’d like addressed to make it easier and faster to navigate.

Video courses are a small segment of the online shopping experiences and there are relatively few off-the-shelf products that can be utilized for this purpose. In a perfect world we’d hire a design team to custom build a site tailored to our needs. We’d probably need to hire someone or a team to manage it as well. Needless to say that is not in-range with our current budget. So we’ll all have to make do with what we have for a little while. Behind the scenes, we’re looking at improving the download and streaming experience without breaking the bank and we hope to bring forth some of those changes in the not too distant future.

Fujifilm X100 VI, XF 23MM | F/5.6 | 1/20 SEC | ISO 500

Tours & workshops

We recently returned from our second tour of Bhutan in the last two years and are currently on a bit of a break from the tour business. We’re working at shoring up some other needed areas of attention here in the office before heading back out on the road.

We’ve recently sat down and drawn up some ideas for the next five years, including new locations and returns to favorite places. The next tour is most likely a new destination – Australia. We’ll hopefully have more details regarding this in the very near future – stay tuned.

Workshops are different than tours as the focus shifts from experiencing the uniqueness of a location, to learning while in a stimulating environment. Workshops also come at a much reduced price and fit into a short time frame thus opening up the experience to a wider variety of photographers. We don’t have specific details to announce at this time but I am starting to collect lesson ideas and learning experiences that will be engaging, fun, and beneficial. If you’re interested in either tours or workshops, sign up for our Tours Subscriber List. All tours/workshops are announced to those clients first.

Canon EOS R1, RF 100-500MM F/7.1 L IS USM @ 428MM | F/7.1 | 1/100 SEC | ISO 400

We thank you

It’s been a great honor to work with so many different types of photographers from all over the world. We’ve sold classes to people in 95 countries and your kind words and positive reviews have kept us energized for keeping at it. We intend to create more courses, on more topics, and travel to new locations in the hope that we can help you on your photographic journey.

Photography is a lifestyle; one of recognizing beauty, uniqueness, and that little something that makes a place or person special. Photographers do indeed see the world differently. I consider it a low-level superpower, Superman has X-Ray vision, photographers have ‘compositional vision’ – the ability to see and compose pleasing photos from everyday scenes.

If photography is your passion, you can make a living with it or you can pursue it on your own terms and time. Choosing photography as your career has never been easy, but it does seem to be getting more difficult as technology advances (think A.I). No matter where photography fits into your life, we believe it enhances and expands the life experience, and we’re here to help you make the most of it.

Canon EOS R1, RF 24-70MM F/2.8 L IS USM @ 48MM | F/8 | 2 SEC | ISO 100