Learning or doing?
Show me the money
This may be a touchy subject for some but one I feel needs addressing, and I hope I can balance fairly as well as offer food for thought for you.
Recently i've seen posts from people advertising photography courses online for a fee. Many of these are very good at teaching you composition, learning the basics of the tech you have and giving you a start in your photography. useful and fun... but a certificate will not make you a photographer as neither will parting with your cash.
What makes you a good photographer is you... Your eye and your passion. Information and advice is useful, but do you really need to pay for what certain video websites, social media forums or the web can tell you free of charge?
But..but..What if I fail?
The person who never made a mistake, never made anything... Let me show you something...
This picture took over an hour and hundreds of shots to get to where I was happy with it. I took it using a tripod, a timer and just a pop up flash. It was basic equipment and something if I had to do again would be a much more pleasant experience for all!
The Crop has taken the top of my head off, a big deal? (well.. that depends who you ask... subjectivity... last blog post!). I failed numerous times resulting in dark images, blurry images and pin cushioning before a little bit of trial and error and a quick online tip got me the desired result and I now use this image on many of my professional pages, including Linkedin.
My point I’m making is, these courses are useful, but if i'd spent lots of money would I have learned to take a portrait sooner? Yes.. would I have learned to take the image better? in honesty.. no. I did that by doing...
Some of these educational establishments offer true creative freedom and a chance to become the photographer you want to be come in the field you choose. Others will restrict, will place caveats on the way you to shoot and place standards on your images. Critique and constructive criticism is fine and I often place my photo's online for this very feedback.
However to expect an organisation to place restrictions on you creativity and freedom is surely completely the opposite of why you picked a camera up in the first place.
Want to learn how to work with a model? take a friend of family member and pose them, review it and go again. Want the confidence to shoot in the street? learn the other modes of your camera, What does AV do? what will happen if you increase shutter speed? the worst that can happen is that you get a photo you don’t like... if it's a digital camera you hit the delete button...
if you are going to sign up with a photo school research fully, What do you want to achieve out of it all? how soon will it take to get there and would that money be better spent investing into your passion with equipment to help you learn and gain confidence?
I hope you enjoyed the post, Comment your thoughts below and let me know anything photographic you'd like me to talk about.
Until next time, keep your eyes open and head up.. because that's where you'll see and make magic!
