Are you self-taught or did you go to school?

[fdonadio]

I was self-taught in composition and aesthetics. Well, I always tried to imitate one of my idols, Jordan Grant Brittain. My father taught me how to use the Nikon F3 and the meter. I have never used the automatic mode (aperture priority), even to this day. I consider I have learned a great deal of the basics, though I learn something new everyday. I even worked as a photographer for a skateboarding magazine!

 

[jtk]

NOT POSSIBLE, even Zeiss lenses on Leicas have to follow the laws of physics.

I think he's confusing "plasticity" with "depth of field" .. some lenses depict changes of depth with more subtlety/smoothness. I don't think Leica lenses are among those, but some older Zeiss lenses have that capability.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

My first formal qualification was as a Typesetter (1978-81), followed by Personal Assistant/Secretarial work for an Actuary in an insurance company (6 years), where my typing skills (minimum requirement of 110 wpm uncorrected) were refined! These jobs provided cash to pursue photography and engage in my past time of bicycle touring.

University (Melbourne-) was from 1988 to 1991 with Bachelor of Arts (Photography/Photographic Practice). In 1992 my (late) sister and I founded Silent Street Photography under the provisions of the family trust, which is still active. I was included in the Trust on the proviso I would be well-behaved with money. Wrong. Unhappy with the limited cash I was given, I took a swipe at the fund and established a charity of which I was the Director, along with the family cat (!). Long story cut short, the tax man cometh with his rapier drawn: "I saw what you did there!". Sissy was not amused.

I do not think the degree was at all helpful for my chosen genre of landscape photography, though it did provide insight into business development and adapting to market change and understanding dynamics, etc. So from 1992 onward it has been just a huge amount of experience, mostly travel involving scenic/landscape photography. I came to grips with hand-held metering through Sekonic Masters (2008) that helped understand the (perceived!) complexity of their top-line multispot meters!

 

[mshchem]

My Dad started me with Microdol-X, Verichrome, Medalist and Dektol. An ancient Federal enlarger, Elkay Bakelite tank, Ace hard rubber trays and a Kodak print blotter roll. The DW 4x5 prints took forever to dry. My Dad would put the blotter roll over the floor register of our gravity furnace.
I took it from there. All my life I've been involved in cameras and darkroom work. I have a BS in chemistry but spent my career in manufacturing engineering.
This evening I made a batch of silver nitrate, beautiful crystals. I have never tried to make a living with a camera. So I have a romantic view of these Arts and Sciences.
Mike

 

[Vaughn]

My father was given a Rolleiflex -- bought as a present by his sister at a PX in Spain in the early 50s. He had a 35mm film adapter in it and it was the family snapshot camera until the late 60s when he bought a Kodak 804 Instamatic. He gave the Rollei to my sister, but she dropped the photoclass and gave the camera to me. I made my first prints in the employee darkroom in Grand Canyon National Park, 1977, the film developed in Flagstaff. Started to take photoclasses (one quarter a year, all I could afford) while working on my BS in Natural Resources Mgt (1981). I attended a couple of Friends of Photography Workshops (scholorships), then started being a workshop assistant for them for many years. I was post-Adams, but I experienced an incredible range of artists/photographers thru those workshops.

I spent 12 seasons working for the US Forest Service, packing mules, building trails, fighting fires, cleaning outhouses, etc -- and volunteered in the university darkroom every winter for access (and I enjoyed helping students). Then I worked 24 years as the darkroom tech for the same university -- helping students (and profs) with just about all aspects of phjotography. Taught 2-week courses in photography to kids, 10 to 18yrs old, for awhile. I give workshops in carbon printing at PhotoCentral (Hayward) and in Yosemite Valley. So my life work in photography has been in an educational atmosphere...but I have never taken an art history class, and the professor was kind to me in my one drawing class and gave me a 'C' (general ed class).

I tend to think the distinction or significance between 'self-taught' and 'school-taught' is rather moot. Everybody is self-taught and taught by others, more or less; thru personal contact or thru their writings or their work. Learning does not stop once one leaves an institute of learning...it is just beginning.

 

[Arklatexian]

Back in 1995 I was President of the College Photo Department Advisory Board. It was a school where I took a Zone System class in1982 that refined my skills and made me commercially more viable to professional photographers. I was off to the races.

In 2002 I was asked to teach. At the time I could not imagine teaching photography; you were either a photographer at heart or you weren't: I worked my way out of the darkroom and on to sets and lighting. I was chained to a 4x5 and stacks of Ektachrome 64, Plus X and boxes of polaroid 664 and 665. My place in the industry was a function of well developed work ethic and solid skills.

I teach now, as a part of my work. I have a long history of working with people and leading organizations. I work with administrative people and with a wide variety of students at different skill levels. In the past I also trained photo assistants who got to me from sheer hustle. (Former restaurant workers made the best assistants; constantly busy.) This site is full of shooters. So I ask:

Are you self-taught or did you go to school to learn photography?

I am what most of you would call "self taught", but I have been schooled by every photographer, amateur and professional, who allowed me to visit and watch them work, both in the studio, outdoors, and in the darkroom. Always black & white. Hard to see anything in a darkroom when color is being printed. I have also benefitted from the school of personal experience, learning, I hope, from my mistakes.. Always thought formal photographic training might have saved some time but I don't think it would have been as much fun. Do it over again? Hell yes..........Regards!

 

[Berkeley Mike]

NOT POSSIBLE, even Zeiss lenses on Leicas have to follow the laws of physics.

Geez, Siruis, don't be so serious: its a joke.

 

[Berkeley Mike]

I think he's confusing "plasticity" with "depth of field" .. some lenses depict changes of depth with more subtlety/smoothness. I don't think Leica lenses are among those, but some older Zeiss lenses have that capability.

Oh man, you guys are killing me. It's a joke.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Back in 1995 I was President of the College Photo Department Advisory Board. It was a school where I took a Zone System class in1982 that refined my skills and made me commercially more viable to professional photographers. I was off to the races.

In 2002 I was asked to teach. At the time I could not imagine teaching photography; you were either a photographer at heart or you weren't: I worked my way out of the darkroom and on to sets and lighting. I was chained to a 4x5 and stacks of Ektachrome 64, Plus X and boxes of polaroid 664 and 665. My place in the industry was a function of well developed work ethic and solid skills.

I teach now, as a part of my work. I have a long history of working with people and leading organizations. I work with administrative people and with a wide variety of students at different skill levels. In the past I also trained photo assistants who got to me from sheer hustle. (Former restaurant workers made the best assistants; constantly busy.) This site is full of shooters. So I ask:

Are you self-taught or did you go to school to learn photography?

self-taught and a bunch of good workshops;I don't think a school exists where one can learn all these skills in one place.

 

[DDTJRAC]

Self taught

 

[Ian Grant]

A curiosity: did moving to eh more vocational aspect of the craft help or hinder your creativity?

It helped improve creativity quite significantly, but at the same time I'd already tightened up my craft, so the two went hand in ahnd.

Does industrial Archeology go back to stone knives and arrow heads or Industrial revolution stuff?

Industrial Archaeology begins with the Industrial Revolution. Back around 1986/7 I realised I was photographing traces of man in the landscape, it hadn't been planned but began to expand. I needed to think more rationally about what \i was being drawn to photograph and give the work a more coherent structure.

It was about a decade later and after some large exhibitions I decided to study Industrial archaeology at Birmingham University (UK), already with a view of doing a Photography MA afterwards.

Ironically 12 years ago I moved abroad into a classical archaeological region, the Aegean coast of western Turkey, close to Ephesesus, the Roman capital of Asia Minor.

Did doing further education help ? Yes, although it slowed me down (in terms of output not the speed I work) it also made me more thoughtful about the images I was and still am making. It probably mainly re-inforced the ways I was thinking and working.

I don't think you can ever stop learning, when I moved to Turkey I had to re-think my LF technique as tripods were banned many places I photographed (also in Greece), so I had to learn to shoot hand-held without compromising quality, also cope with quite different lighting conditions to the UK.

Ian

 

[removed account4]

At some point, whether academically or self-taught, you take over and work the materials in the light on your own.

exactly !

No, actually, you needed a Leica lens which has much better depth of field built into it. They use special glass...

Geez, Siruis, don't be so serious: its a joke.

Oh man, you guys are killing me. It's a joke.

<Z O O M !!>

LOL

When I started I thought that if you bounced the camera, like dotting an "i", when firing the shutter it would pronounce the focus better....

that only works when you use the rare leica maraca edition

 

[Bob Carnie]

I did both, I went to Fanshawe College in the early 70's and graduated the three year photography program, during my professional career I have taken many specialty courses, and then I scoured APUG and Large Format Photography, from this grouping of select groups I then did a lot of self testing and thousands of test prints.

 

[Ian Grant]

self-taught and a bunch of good workshops;I don't think a school exists where one can learn all these skills in one place.

There are plenty of Degree and similar level courses where you can learn all the skills, but it's up to students to decide what they really want so they get the best out of their course.

I have a friend, now a top advertising/commercial photographer, who spent time while still at school assisting during the holidays, chose the most appropriate course, made sure he had the right experience through his course's work experience placements. So after three years he'd become an extremely accomplished photographer.

Ian

 

[BMbikerider]

What made you acquire these skills in the early days?

Simply put I wanted to. No other reason than that.

 

[fdonadio]

that only works when you use the rare leica maraca edition

Isn’t it the Leica M-araca?

 

[chriscrawfordphoto]

My dad taught me the basics when I was a kid. He had an Olympus OM-G (OM-20 outside the USA), a fairly basic 35mm SLR. He taught me how to use it, then bought one like it for me when I was 11 years old.

When I went to high school, I took photography class, and learned to develop black and white film and to print both black and white and color negatives.

Then I went to art school, Indiana University, and earned a Bachelors in Fine Arts. I graduated in 1999, right before digital began taking over the commercial world, so I ended up having to teach myself photoshop and digital printing right after finishing a degree in photography, lol.

So, for me it is partly formal education, partly learning from my dad, and partly self-taught.

 

[removed account4]

Isn’t it the Leica M-araca?

uh huh

 

[Berkeley Mike]

Isn’t it the Leica M-araca?

It depends upon which side fo the ocean you are on, i.e., colour/color.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Completely self-taught. And it shows.

 

[Jim Jones]

I started dabbling in photography in the late 1940s with an ancient folding Kodak with one instant shutter speed and an adjustable meniscus f/14 lens. Film data sheets and an encyclopedia were the first teachers. The photographic book library now has maybe 200 books, ancient and recent. A few courses on photography in college added a different perspective than just reading. A summer of photographing for the Army Corps of Engineers also helped. I bought my first Leica in 1953, and have been helped with a variety of good cameras, large and small, since then. Considering what can be learned from one's mistakes, I should be a master photographer by now, but am still learning on this and other forums, a good camera club, and seeing fine photos.

 

[grahamp]

My parents had an interest in cinematography before the children came along, and my mother's side of the family has several artists.

I'm essentially self-taught. I managed to fit in an 'O' Level exam while I was at school based on demonstrated ability. There was a technical photography module while I was studying geology. I read a lot, visited exhibitions, exposed a lot of film. Hung out with other photographers. I have done some informal mentoring and teaching.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I rather expect that Andrew can add some quite useful nuance to his comment.
But I would say that "teaching" photography to inexperienced people, even in the informal circumstances that I have done so, has energized, inspired and definitely interested me.
It can also be really satisfying.
And sometimes really entertaining too .

 

[Berkeley Mike]

Simply put I wanted to. No other reason than that.

No, really. Did you see something you had to have? Did you just like the gismos? Were you after glamour?

 

[Berkeley Mike]

I started dabbling in photography in the late 1940s with an ancient folding Kodak with one instant shutter speed and an adjustable meniscus f/14 lens. Film data sheets and an encyclopedia were the first teachers. The photographic book library now has maybe 200 books, ancient and recent. A few courses on photography in college added a different perspective than just reading. A summer of photographing for the Army Corps of Engineers also helped. I bought my first Leica in 1953, and have been helped with a variety of good cameras, large and small, since then. Considering what can be learned from one's mistakes, I should be a master photographer by now, but am still learning on this and other forums, a good camera club, and seeing fine photos.

My mom had a Brownie in the shipyard housing in Richmond just postwar. She clearly had vision. I picked it up just out of Berkeley in 1975; it was my way of making the world hold still, even for just a moment.