Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: BJL on May 23, 2012, 10:51:07 am
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I wonder if the new home page quote
"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst". – Henri Cartier-Bresson
will inspire another 10,000 post thread debating the relevance of extensive practice in general, and that number in particular, to mastering an art or craft like photography.
I hope not ... but then again, maybe I just started it.
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Which makes me wonder whether it will take you another 6000 posts or so, to finally say something of relevance here…
8)
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Should have stayed with the original quotation. HC-B can certainly not be trusted in the context of the current quotation: in my own experience some of my best ideas were out there right at the start.
Yes, after a little while there's not much left to learn in photography - unless you insist in including all its history and a list of practitioners of high or low fame as being part of 'photography' at which stage it becomes a memory game rather than, with luck, an art. Of course, this presumption of rapid learning is based on film, where you took a lot of care to learn and understand what you were doing if only because of the cost of film; today with digi, despite the contradictory claims so often read here, you can click a million clicks and so what? what's new? what's learned if it costs nothing to make the same mistakes over and over again? So in a contemporary context, perhaps HC-B was right, but since he was speaking of and in other times, he was also mistaken.
Rob C
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Good quote. Meaningless, but eye-catching; even thinking of objections to it is interesting.
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I don't know where this leaves me. I very much doubt I am ever going to get to 10,000 . . .
;) John
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I don't know where this leaves me. I very much doubt I am ever going to get to 10,000 . . . ;) John
That's not bad, for a start!
But then look at it this way: nothing was created equal: it was created individual(ly?) unless we speak of twins. In which case, your 10,000 may be worth another's 1,000,000.
Rob C
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We should not forget that Henri Cartier-Bresson was not interested in the process of photography. He always got someone else to develop his negatives and produce his prints.
One might wonder what he would consider to be a photograph. Is a negative a photograph, or is the finished print the photograph?
In the digital age, with autobracketing capability up to 9 frames, stitching capaibility of more than 9 frames, and fast frame rates up to 12 fps, I'm not sure that the 10,000 figure is relevant, unless one is referring to 10,000 fully processed images that have been printed or are ready for printing.
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Does a 400 mp pano count as one or as 25 images? ;)
Cheers,
Bernard
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For every opinion there is always a counter...
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." (Shunryu Suzuki Roshi: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind)
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"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst".
– Henri Cartier-Bresson
make that times ten in the digital times!!!
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I wonder if the new home page quote
"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst". – Henri Cartier-Bresson
Lets see, 10,000 photographs at 10fps is 1000 seconds.
That's not even an hour with a camera hooked up to DC power supply and computer.
"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst".
– Henri Cartier-Bresson
make that times ten in the digital times!!!
That's still a small enough number that at 10fps, I'll get it done between breakfast and lunch. Probably need to take the camera in for a shutter servicing at lunch break though.
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Does a 400 mp pano count as one or as 25 images?
Bernard, it really depends on the overlap factor. And of course on the orientation.
Conversely, I kept in my collection a single panoramic image spanning an entire 2-meter strip of 35mm film using Seitz Roundshot and a 400mm lens.
Technically, I could split it into 36-40 individual images.
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While the banter is amusing it masks the more serious intent of the quote.
Mastery of any skill takes practice. When students ask how they can improve their work my no-so-glib answer is, "Take more photographs".
We all do photography for different reasons, but if one wants to really master ones art, whatever it is, it takes constant practice.
Michael
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Is photography as an art form more akin to "performance", or to "composition"?
There are clearly more people able to "perform" music, then there are people able to "compose" music. I can imagine that lots of practice allows for better "performance", but I doubt the same holds true for better "composition".
In addition: doesn't it also require a certain amount of (life) experience to be able to judge "when & what" is actually worth capturing? And isn't this really what the quote may be referring at?
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Unlike with music, in the visual arts composition and performance are intertwined.
In music I'm sure there there performers who can't compose, but I doubt that there are composer who can't play an instrument, though maybe not at master level.
Michael
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Does a 400 mp pano count as one or as 25 images? ;)
Maybe "Your first ten TeraBytes are your worst."
But I am happy to take the real message that continued experience, including review and learning from it, will improve our craft. At least for the vast majority of us who lack mythological, Mozartian levels of innate genius.
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Is photography as an art form more akin to "performance", or to "composition"?
There are clearly more people able to "perform" music, then there are people able to "compose" music. I can imagine that lots of practice allows for better "performance", but I doubt the same holds true for better "composition".
In addition: doesn't it also require a certain amount of (life) experience to be able to judge "when & what" is actually worth capturing? And isn't this really what the quote may be referring at?
You've just illustrated the single greatest factor this snapper faces: why bother? Was a time before turning pro that I saw it all as a pre-destined learning process, with the professional carrot dangling as motivator in the far(?) distance. Then, once in the business, business itself and its momentum and opportunities for lifestyle that that brought carried me along from crest to crest, or from the peak of one depression to the peak of the next (always hard to judge at the time).
Now, with all that but memory, why make images anymore?
It’s very easy to imagine that, once into photography, it will provide its own reward and, thus, motivation. It doesn’t necessarily do anything of the kind. I find that trying to enthuse myself into shooting stuff remote from pro days is both difficult and not really particularly rewarding of itself. I sometimes wonder if it’s an inevitable reaction to growing older or whether the lack of financial reward somehow removes its validity, its payoff, as it were, though certainly I don’t mean that in monetary terms alone. Either way, there appears little reason to justify the effort both in the mythical field as on the all too real typist chair at the friggin’ computer.
I see this as perhaps being somewhat wider-spread than realised: could a lack of real motivation for image-making per se be the reason so many ‘photographers’ spend hours on pixel-peeping, on camera talk, on printers/inks and Photoshop or whatever columns? Are the associated games of greater real reward (or interest) than what actually goes into the front of the lens?
Speaking of which, I think that today brought on a unique change of mind regarding my general view on landscape. For this I must thank Chuck K. whose latest black/white work is on show somewhere here on LuLa this morning. Previous to those images, and though I am already familiar with his website, I felt that landscape was essentially not a lot more (at best) than an exercise in editing what God had already created. Now, I’m no longer quite so sure of my ground (no pun etc.). The reason for this is as follows: colour landscape seems to be an exercise in shooting what’s there and turning that into as accurate as possible renditions of what was seen, with every little detail as crisp as can be, the more colour or/and detail able to be reproduced the better (Zone etc.). However, Chuck’s current crop is different. I hope he takes no offence, but the images, to me, are of nothing remarkably interesting in itself, but boy, what that has been turned into is something very much else! I wonder if it would have worked in colour, but in black and white there is no other fair word to use: creative. Never thought I’d see a time I would honestly claim that for landscape, but I won’t deny what I saw today.
It would be nice to feel similarly inspired to go out there and do some of the same… but. But, that’s somebody else’s bag, and what’s the point of faking it (if one could) for one’s own?
;-(
Rob C
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My first 500 photos were all adventure and discovery. Today, it's mostly routine. So, what is it that makes photography "good"?
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Mastery of any skill takes practice. When students ask how they can improve their work my no-so-glib answer is, "Take more photographs".
We all do photography for different reasons, but if one wants to really master ones art, whatever it is, it takes constant practice.
But you can't do that in a vacuum.
I think there's something that needs to be added here, because practice alone is not sufficient.
I believe that a necessary component for advancement is critique of one's work.
That is, if nobody tells you what you're doing wrong (or what you could do better) then how do you know what to improve?
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But you can't do that in a vacuum.
I think there's something that needs to be added here, because practice alone is not sufficient.
I believe that a necessary component for advancement is critique of one's work.
That is, if nobody tells you what you're doing wrong (or what you could do better) then how do you know what to improve?
That's why people attend seminars, take workshops, and do 1-on-1 mentoring sessions with photographers whose work they admire. That's why they also join camera clubs.
Michael
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My first 500 photos were all adventure and discovery. Today, it's mostly routine. So, what is it that makes photography "good"?
That's where study comes in. Buy books, visit galleries, go to museums. Study the work of photographers who you admire. Don't just look at pictures – study them.
Attend workshops and seminars. Take a night course.
It all depends on how motivated you are.
Michael
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For every opinion there is always a counter...
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." (Shunryu Suzuki Roshi: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind)
If you think Suzuki Roshi was advocating never moving past the beginner stage, I'd suggest you've misunderstood.
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It’s very easy to imagine that, once into photography, it will provide its own reward and, thus, motivation. It doesn’t necessarily do anything of the kind. I find that trying to enthuse myself into shooting stuff remote from pro days is both difficult and not really particularly rewarding of itself. I sometimes wonder if it’s an inevitable reaction to growing older or whether the lack of financial reward somehow removes its validity, its payoff, as it were, though certainly I don’t mean that in monetary terms alone. Either way, there appears little reason to justify the effort both in the mythical field as on the all too real typist chair at the friggin’ computer.
I'm coming at this from a very different angle than you, having never made any money from photography. In fact, I made a conscious decision early on that I wasn't going to try to make a living at it, because I didn't want it to become a job that I ended up hating. In any case, I find the simple act of making a photo to be enjoyable; maneuvering around in three dimensional space trying to find some organization of elements that will be interesting in two dimensions is just plain fun. The fact that I sometimes manage to come up with an image that others enjoy is icing on the cake.
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Michael's right.
But going around pushing the button on your DSLR isn't practice, it's wasting time. You need engaging practice. And, sometimes, in some cases -- maybe like Rob C's -- you may have to decide to give it up. Just because you are a competent professional photographer is no reason to keep doing it, if you don't enjoy it or think it has little value.
I'm a professional novelist, but for twenty-five years or so, I was a professional journalist at The Miami Herald and at the St. Paul papers. As a reporter, I'd write every day; during a few years as an editor, I'd edit every day. When I was reporting, editors had no problem telling me when they didn't like something, either for the actual content or lack of it, or the way I expressed it. As an editor, I had no trouble telling reporters what I thought -- on a daily newspaper, there's just no time to fool around. I didn't know it, but what I was getting over all those years was a lot of practice in novel writing, which includes intense self-editing. I still had to learn some specific aspects of the novel-writing business, but the practice and daily life experience was just what I needed. In fact, it was absolutely critical. If you look at a lot of my peers in the thriller-wring business, you find that almost all of them have similar backgrounds.
I think perhaps if one wished to become a photographer/artist, a few years (but not too many) spent as a pro photographer would be pretty useful. "Creative" workshops are not so useful, I think, for a lot of reasons, but technical workshops are, if you need them. I took a technical workshop on lighting at Santa Fe Workshops and learned more in a week than I ever needed, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. But other than the occasional workshop, practice is the most critical thing -- but engaging practice, the kind that includes looking at your own work, and thinking seriously about it. You could go out and take a picture of a fire hydrant and learn something from it...or not. Taking a thousand shots and then desperately searching for a good one won't teach you much. Taking ten carefully considered shots, and then contemplating each of the prints could teach you quite a lot.
It might even teach you that you're not interested in doing that, which is a great thing to learn, because you can move on to something else.
Edit: I just read over the other posts again, and think it's important to stress what Michael said in his last one. You do have to read and study. As a novelist, I picked out a book by one of my favorite writers, and tore it to pieces, and then tried to rewrite it, to understand how he'd done what he'd done, and why he'd done it. What I did was in no way publishable, but it was an invaluable experience: I began to see how pieces of the puzzle fit together, and to appreciate such things as rhythm. But if you really study the people you most admire, and think of how you can riff off them, you'll eventually find your own signature and will expand beyond what your models have done. The other thing is motivation. To become a serious artist, you really do have to be somewhat obsessed. Persistence is critical. If you're happy taking pictures of your family, or whatever, casually, that's just fine. But to become a serious, dedicated photographer, I think being a little nuts won't hurt. I don't particularly like saying this, because it sounds sycophantic, and Michael has enough people kissing his ass, but over all the years some of us have been on these forums, and all the posts we have done, we've seen at the top of the forum photo after photo by Michael, many of them extremely good. So he writes for the forum and does camera reviews and travels to Mexico, but every few days there's another pretty good photo up. Who else who is regularly on this forum does that?
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I teach photography in a local art school. I was working through a girls portfolio of work over the year and I expressed admiration for the fact that she has stuck to a subject and by working on it, created a really masterful set of images. She countered in a worried tone that she had taken many duds to achieve this final cut of good images. She was worried that she wasn't creating great images with every shutter press. I wonder who ever put that idea into her head?
Cartier Bressons contact sheets were a shining lesson of how many images it takes even one of histories best photographers to get a great image. AA said that if he got one good image a month he was satisfied. I have often mentioned in class that there are images which took me years of returning to the same spot to get the lighting perfect. As Michael says, as my photography mentor, an old crusty photojournalist always told me, you have to go out and shoot! No you aren't going to hit the 'one' with every frame and often not with every tens or even hundreds of frames. But when you work through and realise what went wrong with all the others , you will know better for next time and not bother hitting the shutter release with flat light or a boring composition and so on and so on. You can't learn only from books, from videos, from tutorials, etc. You have to go out there and just shoot till you learn from your mistakes.
In this golden age of photography, due to digital, this learning curve has greatly accelerated because of instant feedback. Many old timers bemoan how fast the newcomers are butting into their territory but the fact is that these newbies are intelligent, have a drive to learn and because they don't have to spend a fortune and so many years to learn from their mistakes, are able to leap forward in skill level at a rate that has never been seen before. The raw talent is there, the barriers to realising it are now wide open to those with a thirst and drive to achieve.
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I teach photography in a local art school. I was working through a girls portfolio of work over the year and I expressed admiration for the fact that she has stuck to a subject and by working on it, created a really masterful set of images. She countered in a worried tone that she had taken many duds to achieve this final cut of good images. She was worried that she wasn't creating great images with every shutter press. I wonder who ever put that idea into her head?
Cartier Bressons contact sheets were a shining lesson of how many images it takes even one of histories best photographers to get a great image. AA said that if he got one good image a month he was satisfied. I have often mentioned in class that there are images which took me years of returning to the same spot to get the lighting perfect. As Michael says, as my photography mentor, an old crusty photojournalist always told me, you have to go out and shoot! No you aren't going to hit the 'one' with every frame and often not with every tens or even hundreds of frames. But when you work through and realise what went wrong with all the others , you will know better for next time and not bother hitting the shutter release with flat light or a boring composition and so on and so on. You can't learn only from books, from videos, from tutorials, etc. You have to go out there and just shoot till you learn from your mistakes.
In this golden age of photography, due to digital, this learning curve has greatly accelerated because of instant feedback. Many old timers bemoan how fast the newcomers are butting into their territory but the fact is that these newbies are intelligent, have a drive to learn and because they don't have to spend a fortune and so many years to learn from their mistakes, are able to leap forward in skill level at a rate that has never been seen before. The raw talent is there, the barriers to realising it are now wide open to those with a thirst and drive to achieve.
Can't resist quoting myself, Ben:
"Yes, after a little while there's not much left to learn in photography - unless you insist in including all its history and a list of practitioners of high or low fame as being part of 'photography' at which stage it becomes a memory game rather than, with luck, an art. Of course, this presumption of rapid learning is based on film, where you took a lot of care to learn and understand what you were doing if only because of the cost of film; today with digi, despite the contradictory claims so often read here, you can click a million clicks and so what? what's new? what's learned if it costs nothing to make the same mistakes over and over again? So in a contemporary context, perhaps HC-B was right, but since he was speaking of and in other times, he was also mistaken."
So there you are - differing points of view/perspective at every bend of the road!
Rob C
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Don't think it's true though Rob. They are learning from their mistakes and fast. My wedding assistant shot his first frame 4 years ago. He is rapidly becoming my equal. He is learning incredibly fast. My class are art students not specifically photographers. For them the camera is just a means to an end to achieve their art and because the tool is now far easier to use, they are achieving incredible results at a rate that I never saw back when I learnt photography with film back when the AE-1 was the height of photographic technology.
There are those who will bemoan that the art of controlling the machines is lost. Personally I couldn't care less. The only thing that matters is transferring what is in your mind onto paper. Anything that goes in between is a necessary and annoying evil in my opinion and anything which helps learning and achieving the mastery of that tool can only be a good thing. The only ones who disagree usually are those who had it so much harder with their learning curve and resent the fact that others can match their decades of learning in years. Oh and those who worship the process rather than the art or the results. Lot of them around, they live on planet DPReview. :D :D
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"The only ones who disagree usually are those who had it so much harder with their learning curve and resent the fact that others can match their decades of learning in years."
That's the bit I find unbelievable, Ben; the wet process is simplicity itself unless you want to do with wet photography what some people want, now (only on your planet DPReview?), to do with digital. And in terms of practical reality, there's no need for doing things like that unless your bag is making the easy difficult.
It took me a while to get au fait with PS6 because I live in a desert, so to speak, devoid of others with similar photographic interests and my learning of digi has been gleaned from the net; I find books (and I have them) well-nigh useless as teachers of anything technical. However, despite my very much less than expert savvy of the programme, I find that I can do pretty much anything that I want to do with a photograph - so far. Okay, having a 'primitive' version of PS prevents things such as correction of verticals etc. but then I see that as bad photographic practice anyway: I am of the school that says one should use the right tools from the start. But, insofar as the art of the single image is concerned, I neither seek nor really need anything more. Also, I believe that coming from a film background and doing my own processing all my life, I already know what I should look for in the great transition from original capture to paper reproduction.
I still believe that high quality photography is basically a very simple process, to do with the mind and eye and with technological mastery of a simple procedure (which one can choose to complicate to the nth degree, if one gets one's jollies that way) - or so it used to be...
Which is where I guess I came in. But then, as Cooter would say, I have no horse in this race.
Rob C
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To be honest I'm talking more about composition and lighting.
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Problem solved!
I connected my G1X to an intervalometer and will soon have 10000 pictures!
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To be honest I'm talking more about composition and lighting.
Then you are treading on very doubtful ground, as far as I'm concerned!
Regarding composition, I always believed that to be instinctive and best left alone to the particular snapper to develop by himself, drawing upon the world of magazines, film and tv imagery for inspiration and guidance about what sort of thing appeals to him personally. That way, there is at play the automatic selection process of the individual's mind; with a real tutor, there is the unavoidable influence of the tutor's own mind at play - and I hardly buy that such a person can turn that off any more than I would be able to do.
Lighting? What's to teach that the same study of existing photography doesn't reveal of its own accord? I always will remember Vogue shooter Sante D'Orazio writing that whenever he came upon a studio set with lots of lights up, his first feeling was: oh! -oh! this doesn't augur well!
But I'm sorry, I suppose I'm just trying to score some useless points...
; -)
Rob C
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:D
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I wonder if the new home page quote
"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst". – Henri Cartier-Bresson
will inspire another 10,000 post thread debating the relevance of extensive practice in general, and that number in particular, to mastering an art or craft like photography.
I hope not ... but then again, maybe I just started it.
Let me tell you as if asking.
Do you know why you photograph? every single image? Is the vision one of the terms or you just can’t help it? One look inwards replaces these (10,000) posts and 10,000 photographs alike. One of the relevancies that need no debating :)
Hynek
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That's where study comes in.
Not for me. For me, routine and boredom came as a result of study. Photography, as studied, became predictable and boring. I learned too much stuff and it stands in the way of being creative and looking with fresh eyes. If anything, I think I have to un-study photography and forget everything everyone told me.
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Looking back at my own archive, I see that I am nowhere near 10,000 photographs. Even including the stuff I shot for work, it can't be much more than 5,000 in the fifty-odd years since I started. And many of those were just routine site and building records.
No, the real stuff, the pictures that at the time I hoped meant something (but often didn't, and counting the failures as well of course) come to no more than about 1,500. In the last forty years, that is. And it is still far too bloody many.
I had hoped, and still hope in a way, to say something meaningful - and for that, perhaps ten or twenty really good pictures should do. I have those pictures in my mind's eye, but I cannot manufacture or invent them. They are waiting for me, out there somewhere at some particular time and light, and when I do see them I just hope that I am ready. There probably will be no more than ten or twenty, once all is said and done. Some of them I have already, some are still to come.
John
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Just to be clear, I'm certain that HCB didn't mean 10,000 "keepers". I imagine he meant all shots, including tests, experiments, and failures.
Bresson himself only had a few hundred top ranked images over the course of his carear, and maybe not more than a couple of dozen primos.
Michael
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Can't resist quoting myself, Ben:
"... Of course, this presumption of rapid learning is based on film, where you took a lot of care to learn and understand what you were doing if only because of the cost of film; today with digi, despite the contradictory claims so often read here, you can click a million clicks and so what? what's new? what's learned if it costs nothing to make the same mistakes over and over again?"
Your premise -- if it costs nothing to make the same mistakes over and over again -- is false.
There are costs to photography that still exist with digital -- many people value their free time and have other things to do with it than photography, they can't afford to waste their time making the same mistakes over and over again.
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... If anything, I think I have to un-study photography and forget everything everyone told me.
Or, to paraphrase Miles Davis: first you learn everything there is to learn about music, and then you forget it all and play until you are dizzy.
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Or, to paraphrase Miles Davis: first you learn everything there is to learn about music, and then you forget it all and play until you are dizzy.
And that style of music provides a counter-example to --
Unlike with music, in the visual arts composition and performance are intertwined.
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Not for me. For me, routine and boredom came as a result of study. Photography, as studied, became predictable and boring. I learned too much stuff and it stands in the way of being creative and looking with fresh eyes. If anything, I think I have to un-study photography and forget everything everyone told me.
Best photo advice you'll ever hear; be pleased it comes from yourself.
Rob C
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Looking back at my own archive, I see that I am nowhere near 10,000 photographs. Even including the stuff I shot for work, it can't be much more than 5,000 in the fifty-odd years since I started. And many of those were just routine site and building records.
No, the real stuff, the pictures that at the time I hoped meant something (but often didn't, and counting the failures as well of course) come to no more than about 1,500. In the last forty years, that is. And it is still far too bloody many.
I had hoped, and still hope in a way, to say something meaningful - and for that, perhaps ten or twenty really good pictures should do. I have those pictures in my mind's eye, but I cannot manufacture or invent them. They are waiting for me, out there somewhere at some particular time and light, and when I do see them I just hope that I am ready. There probably will be no more than ten or twenty, once all is said and done. Some of them I have already, some are still to come.
John
John, I've got a box of A3+ prints culled from all I've got left from work days as well as all I've got left from retirement days - so far.
It comes to not a lot, and even from that box I get different opinions of my own about it every (rare) time that I access it, which is usually only when someone shows curiosity. The last time those prints saw light was when famous mountain sculptor Chris F visited and made me eternal up at Formentor.
The problem is that very little photography is able to keep its excitement alive. Repeated viewing kills what's left of it and after a while, it all looks the same or one starts to wonder why it was ever shot in the first place. At least with a painting there's the love of the medium and the joy/agony/despair one felt making it. That has some durability to it, maybe akin to birth pangs, but I'll never really know, obviously enough.
But anyway, it gives us all something to do, at best, or to write about as second best. Or vice versa?
Rob C
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Obviously the practices, technique and study are all there as is the inspiration (the one from the outside so to speak) in my opinion. Taken individually it’s a unique set of rather rough structure to be generalized too in detail. - at the same time no achievement in any field is possible without it.
Michaels’ point about the keepers makes it easy to digest even very widely :)
Hynek
Just to be clear, I'm certain that HCB didn't mean 10,000 "keepers". I imagine he meant all shots, including tests, experiments, and failures.
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Not for me. For me, routine and boredom came as a result of study. Photography, as studied, became predictable and boring. I learned too much stuff and it stands in the way of being creative and looking with fresh eyes. If anything, I think I have to un-study photography and forget everything everyone told me.
I don't know whether or not you're an American, but that's a very American attitude, and IMHO, leads to amateurish and usually fairly inane art. If you look at the very greatest and most innovative artists in almost any field -- and I'm talking Van Gogh, Cezzane, Picasso, Ansel Adams, HCB, Gerschwin -- they all had a deep and serious appreciation of what both their predecessors and their contemporaries were doing. With a lack of study, you don't bring fresh eyes to what you're doing, you bring unsophisticated eyes. You tend to reinvent the wheel, and frankly, the wheel doesn't need reinventing. Translate what you've said to literature: If somebody who wanted to be a writer said that he/she found literature boring, I'd ask, "Why in God's name would you want to be a writer, then?" Same with photography -- if you find the study of it boring, you're probably in the wrong field.
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I think you're misinterpreting what was written: it wasn't not to study/learn about the past, but that once one has done that, then fine, digest it but move on and free your own mind and vision.
Frankly, John, that's one of the main reasons that I advocate not having tutors. When I joined the in-house photographic unit of a very large industrial company in the UK I was obliged to go to night school and join the Institute of British Photographers course as a condition to my employment though I had already learned more in a week within the unit than I ever did over subsequent months of college. As I've mentioned in the past, I had little interest in engineering and associated work, but the job was my one and only route into pro photography so I clung on until I had nothing more to benefit from the place. However, I did learn important techniques such as colour processing and batch printing by hand. Anyway, my interest was fashion and from that interest I was very aware of all the leading photographers in that field.
One night in class, the chap supposedly teaching portraiture and I had a little contretemps: I happened to mention David Bailey with some deep sense of respect and this dodo replied that should his photography resemble Bailey's he'd give up. Right. I didn't go back and I did retain the job, until I left for the commercial world. Cracks about teaching and/or doing are not entirely based on fiction. Worse, this chap actually held a senior post in one of the top commercial studios in Glasgow. I suppose there was a certain Schadenfreude in the air when my own little operation survived the demise of that studio many years later…
Insofar as the non-professional photo world is concerned, I think it even less desirable to follow leaders. If not for the freedom to develop one’s own vision, free of other's ideas, why bother with it at all? Perhaps that's why so many people all do the same kind of thing these days: tutored clones?
The single aspect of learning/teaching that I think is now essential, if only to save precious time, is the face-to-face, one-on-one learning of Photoshop from someone with the time and interest to impart the knowledge. To me, PS isn’t about photography at all: it’s but another science – a technical exercise that now stands in the way of transferring art to paper or screen, but with the fairly successful annihilation of the competition, which other path to follow in order to reach one’s goal?
Rob C
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I don't know whether or not you're an American, but that's a very American attitude, and IMHO, leads to amateurish and usually fairly inane art. If you look at the very greatest and most innovative artists in almost any field -- and I'm talking Van Gogh, Cezzane, Picasso, Ansel Adams, HCB, Gerschwin
Sorry, I don't think your list of names is right. I don't see how you can put Ansel Adams alongside Van Gogh or Picasso. HCB, maybe.
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Best photo advice you'll ever hear; be pleased it comes from yourself.
Ahh, but difficult to follow that advice is. Easy, seductive is the dark side. :)
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I don't know whether or not you're an American
In fact I'm Martian. We prefer to grok and not cram.
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Rob,
You're not talking about *learning.* You're talking about people with various social problems and about disfunctional teaching. There is exactly *one* way to learn something, and that is to teach yourself. Teachers don't actually inject learning into your brain -- they're just pointers. They present information. If you resist learning, you can defeat the best of teachers. So don't confuse learning with bad teachers or poor schools or other problems. Learning is completely distinct from such things.
The other thing about learning is that it's also unavoidable. If a person lives anywhere that he can actually buy a camera, then he's learning about photography. He can't avoid it, given our media-saturated environment. He may not be consciously learning, but he is. By consciously learning, a photographer can at least make choices. If all he does is wander around with a camera and try to develop his own vision, it's mostly likely going to look like a bad version of advertising photography, because he's learning that whether he wishes to or not.
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Rob,
You're not talking about *learning.* You're talking about people with various social problems and about disfunctional teaching. There is exactly *one* way to learn something, and that is to teach yourself. Teachers don't actually inject learning into your brain -- they're just pointers. They present information. If you resist learning, you can defeat the best of teachers. So don't confuse learning with bad teachers or poor schools or other problems. Learning is completely distinct from such things.
The other thing about learning is that it's also unavoidable. If a person lives anywhere that he can actually buy a camera, then he's learning about photography. He can't avoid it, given our media-saturated environment. He may not be consciously learning, but he is. By consciously learning, a photographer can at least make choices. If all he does is wander around with a camera and try to develop his own vision, it's mostly likely going to look like a bad version of advertising photography, because he's learning that whether he wishes to or not.
Some good points, John. However, I think you are underestimating the importance of teachers. They can and should be more than mere pointers and providers of information. They should also impart enthusiasm for the subject. They should, hopefully, inspire their students.
Learning involves a process of making mistakes. Without mistakes, it's difficult to imagine that any real learning could take place. One could say, there can be no learning without mistakes, but there sure are lots of mistakes that take place without subsequent learning.
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As ever, we simply agree to disagree.
That's the trouble with chats like this one: we all arrive from different points of the compass and the inevitable differences in our journeys make it impossible for us to believe the other's traveller's tales. Well, not to disbelieve, I suppose, but to seriously question whether the other travellers were actually asleep in the back of the car, only to awaken when the driver arrived at the motel.
But hell, no harm's done.
Rob C