 Alright, in this video I'm gonna do a review of the five-day deal. Now if you're not familiar with what the five-day deal is, it's a limited time offer where a bunch of photographers and software companies get together and they bundle up a bunch of their products and then market them at a massive discount. Now I believe that the photographers that contribute products do get a cut of the sales, but the largest cut of the sales actually goes to charity, which is really amazing. Now one thing to note is that I am in no way affiliated with the five-day deal. I am not getting a cut or anything for doing this video. The photo loo, the software package that we have is not part of the five-day deal, but if you go and take a look at my last video there's a huge discount code in there, but this is really my honest opinion on what I think about the five-day deal and whether I'm gonna purchase it or not. Now they do this every year and I have purchased it in past years but not every year. You know they boast like $6,000 worth of software for $150, which is a great deal, but no one photographer is really going to use all of the software. So what I do is I go through the list, take a look at everything that's in there, all the courses, all the software, and I think about what am I really listically going to use? And then based on that list of things that come out from it, I decide whether it's really worthwhile for me to buy the bundle or not. Now most of the products in the five-day deal are educational content, meaning there's a lot of courses and a lot of video courses. So when I go through and look at the list I'm going to be looking for courses that interest me. Now they have a lot of beginner and more advanced courses. I kind of consider myself more of an advanced amateur photographer, so I'm going to be looking for more advanced courses in the system. So I'm going to spend most of this review talking about those and why they interest me, but if you're a beginner you may also want to go through and look at it because there are a lot of beginner courses in there. It's just those aren't going to be the reason why I will purchase the five-day deal. So after reviewing the list, the first thing that jumps out to me is it comes with a license for Aurora HDR and a course about Aurora HDR. Now I do do HDR photography. I used to use Photomatics. Now I mainly just do it in Lightroom and Photoshop, but I've seen a lot of images up on the web built with Aurora HDR, edited with Aurora HDR, and they look amazing. So I think that's the skill that I've already wanted to learn. I haven't got around to it. So those two being included here are great. Another thing that I've noticed is when I have posted HDR photos to the stock sites and to social media sites, they typically do really well. Like a really well-processed HDR photo can be very appealing. So I like creating those types of photos. So I'd like to kind of go through and learn how to do it with a different software than I'm used to. The next course that jumps out is one called The Artist. I took a look at it and it's really about more the artistic side of photography, finding your vision and those types of things. And I like to go through and every once in a while take a look at something like that. Those are good, you know, for me, when before I'm going to bed, I want something light, I'll just put that on and take a look at it. I can find they can be really motivational to make me want to get out and shoot more. So I think I'd really like to watch that course as well. The next two are composite courses. So I don't know a lot about composite photography and basically taking, you know, let's say a sky from one image and putting it onto another image, but it really impresses me, people that can. And they've got one there, a sky composite course as well as an aurora composite course. And I would really love to learn that. And, you know, there's been times where you go out to like a location traveling, you've only got one day to be there. And you get out there and it's a really horrible gray sky. So you can get some good photos, but it just doesn't really pop without the sky. So I think it'd be cool for me to be able to go back to some of those photos that I have and, you know, play with them, maybe try to take a sky from a different photo that was a bit more interesting, put it in. So that's something that I like to learn. And there's two courses on that. So I think those would be worthwhile. It'd be really interesting to try out. So the five-day deal really actually has three different bundles. There's the basic bundle, which the ones I just went through. Then there's a charity bonus and a pro bundle. So the basic bundle is like $90. And I could get those four courses for the $90. But for $113, I could also get the charity bundle. And there's a couple of lessons or courses in there that I'm also interested in. All right. Now the first thing in the charity bonus that I like is the Aurora HR Masterclass. That's in the charity bonus. So if I want that, I need to buy the charity bonus anyways. But there's also two courses in there on the Milky Way. One of them is processing the Milky Way and another one is about doing comms with Milky Way. Now, I haven't done any Milky Way photography recently, but I have done it in the past. And I've actually done very well selling those Milky Way photos on stock sites. And it's something I enjoy. I'm very lucky. I'm up in Canada. So I'm in a part of the world where I can get really good photos of the Milky Way. And with winter coming up, winter and really cold weather is much better for getting good photos of the Milky Way. So the timing is good. Like, you know, basically go through, learn these courses and then on a clear day in the winter, I can go out and try to get some shots and practice the techniques. So having a couple of courses on the Milky Way, I think it's really going to motivate me to get out and do a bit more photography this winter. And the last is digital blending basics, right? Like, I know my way around Photoshop and I can make tweaks and I do use it in my workflow, but I am by no means a Photoshop expert. And I think blending is one of those things that when you see people do take images and see what they can do with blending techniques on photos, they can just make them look so much better. And I've seen people do that in the past on YouTube videos. I've never really taken the time to learn it. I think it's the type of thing that's pretty complicated. So you really need a full course. So having that blending techniques, I'll go through and watch that one. I think that's another tool that I could use to really make my photos pop a bit more. Now, on top of the original charity bundle, they also have a pro bundle. And I went and looked through the courses there. But to be honest, nothing really jumped out at me. There have been lessons that I'd want to take. So after going through the list, you know, if I'm going to purchase this, I'd want to go through the basic bundle with the charity bonus. And what I'd be getting is really one piece of software and seven courses and it costs $113. Now, if you think about it, I've got like one photo up on Shutterstock, one stock site of the Milky Way. And this made me $200. I've made well over $1,000 from my Milky Way photos alone. So I think, you know, this is a really good investment. It seems pretty cheap to me. If I can, you know, up my game with my Milky Way photos, maybe even do some more composites, bringing skies in my photos, upload those to stock, you know, I can make back $113 in like a couple months max. Also, one of the things to note about me is that everything I've learned about photography, I've learned from the internet. And probably about half of that came from like blogs and YouTube videos and free content. But the other half of that came from courses. Some of my purchased individually, some of them came from the five day deal. So this may not work for everybody, but for me personally, I find the best way to learn photography is just to get a course, sit down, watch it, and then just go out and try it. And then come back, you know, see what I did wrong, go out and try it again. So this is a really good way for me to learn photography. I know some people do better in courses or do better in groups, but personally, I just like to sit on the internet, watch videos, grab my camera, go out and try it, come back, and then just basically repeat and learn like that. So this is going to be a really good deal for me. I'm really excited actually to kind of learn some of these techniques and, you know, give me a reason to get out there and shoot a bit more. Now, if you want to check out the five day deal, I've got a link down in the description. Also, this is the first time in your channel. A lot of the time what I do is on the channel is I talk about making money from your photography as a side income. So if that's something you're interested, make sure you go ahead and subscribe to the channel. Now, if you're thinking who has the time to do all these courses and, you know, make a side income from photography, one of the things you might also want to check out is our photo do website. It's an online application that allows you to upload your photo once and have them posted to all of the social and the stock sites to kind of help you selling your photos online. And if you're interested in that, you can sign up for the free version. There's a link over here. Best of luck selling your photos online.