School or Trial by fire

[Doremus Scudder]

And to push the students minds in directions that they would never find on their own. That is the one of the few draw-backs of being 'self-taught'.

Being "self-taught" doesn't necessarily mean one doesn't have exposure to new ways of thinking about things. Learning things by oneself isn't process of re-inventing the wheel; usually it involves lots of reading, research and experimentation guided by the information gleaned therefrom, which includes lots of concepts one doesn't come up with on their own.

Literacy is a wonderful thing...

Doremus

 

[urnem57]

Curiosity. Pursue that which you are curious about. There are so many different photographic disciplines, techniques, and technologies that one lifetime isn’t enough to even try them all.

 

[Pieter12]

Being self-taught relies very much on the sources one uses for that instruction. One of the advantages of formal instruction is being taught critical thinking. There is a lot of BS on the internet, you need to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff. Serving as an assistant (sort of an apprenticeship) works well but you learn the methods of the few professionals you work for and that can be lacking in areas. Also, most pros would rather hire an assistant who already has a certain amount of photo education, enough to not screw things up and understand what is needed, but not so set in techniques that they can't easily jump into the pro's methods of working. And as far as I know, school or a series of workshops is probably best way to learn photoshop or Capture One, essential to working professionally today.

 

[Cholentpot]

And to push the students minds in directions that they would never find on their own. That is the one of the few draw-backs of being 'self-taught'.

Oh yes. The 'Outside Art'.

Someone who was not formally trained gets listed as 'outside art' Look up the definition and you won't find something more condensing and elitist.

I find it the opposite. Being self taught has freed me from the conventions of what to do or not to do. I'm free to do as I please. In the end, nothing tried, nothing gained.

 

[Pieter12]

Oh yes. The 'Outside Art'.

Someone who was not formally trained gets listed as 'outside art' Look up the definition and you won't find something more condensing and elitist.

I find it the opposite. Being self taught has freed me from the conventions of what to do or not to do. I'm free to do as I please. In the end, nothing tried, nothing gained.

Outsider art is usually not applied to photography, and now that most cameras have automated features, there is a body of "outsider" photographers working professionally. A lot of these "outsiders" work with low-end cameras and smartphones. Some are the flavor of the day and disappear quickly from the public eye.

 

[Vaughn]

Being "self-taught" doesn't necessarily mean one doesn't have exposure to new ways of thinking about things. Learning things by oneself isn't process of re-inventing the wheel; usually it involves lots of reading, research and experimentation guided by the information gleaned therefrom, which includes lots of concepts one doesn't come up with on their own.

Literacy is a wonderful thing...

Doremus

Very true...some people are quite capable of open-ended exploration. Without a mentor or teacher, most people see what they want to see, read what agrees with their way of thinking, never have to question themselves, etc. Being overly influenced by one's teachers is a big drawback of a university art program. Every path will have positive qualities and drawbacks..and ways to deal with both. So much depends on what one wants to learn.

Some people never stop learning and some people learned everything they needed to learn decades ago. A university art education takes two to six years, give or take depending on the degree. Then after that, it is being self-taught for the rest of one's life. It is a mistake to think that graduation is a stop to learning. I think a university education is a great way to start a life of self-teaching. But being self-taught or having an art degree is no garuantee of the quality of one's study.

Cholentpot -- Definitions I have read of "outsider art" is much different than you have stated.

 

[Pieter12]

Being overly influenced by one's teachers is a big drawback of a university art program.

Yes, but being exposed to the work, methods and philosophy of fellow students/artists can be an invaluable stimulus. Once again, critical thinking is essential.

 

[Cholentpot]

Very true...some people are quite capable of open-ended exploration. Without a mentor or teacher, most people see what they want to see, read what agrees with their way of thinking, never have to question themselves, etc. Being overly influenced by one's teachers is a big drawback of a university art program. Every path will have positive qualities and drawbacks..and ways to deal with both. So much depends on what one wants to learn.

Some people never stop learning and some people learned everything they needed to learn decades ago. A university art education takes two to six years, give or take depending on the degree. Then after that, it is being self-taught for the rest of one's life. It is a mistake to think that graduation is a stop to learning. I think a university education is a great way to start a life of self-teaching. But being self-taught or having an art degree is no garuantee of the quality of one's study.

Cholentpot -- Definitions I have read of "outsider art" is much different than you have stated.

I've seen it described as 'Primitive, whimsical, child-like' I see wikipedia cleaned it up a bit since the last time I checked. It's a gatekeeping term that looks down the nose at those that have not been trained to use what comes naturally to people.

My formal education taught me that learning never ends. Of any sort. There is no finished there is only learning.

 

[eddie]

Yes, but being exposed to the work, methods and philosophy of fellow students/artists can be an invaluable stimulus.

Yes. When I was in school, decades ago, the photo majors had varying interests. I was exposed to things I may not have found on my own. It was a fertile environment for learning. There was a common room where students sat with coffee/lunch/dinner, etc., talking shop, critiquing work, and helping each other. I'm still friends with some of them, 40 years later.
Additionally, being in a unified art building, down the hall was the printmaking studio. I'd often stop by to watch them doing stone lithography. I'd wander into the sculpture studio, and see how light played on 3D objects. Same with the painting, graphic design, drawing studios. There was always something to glean from other media. Much of my openness to seeing my photography in a different way comes from those days.
The degree also allowed me to teach HS photography for awhile.

 

[MattKing]

It works that way in other types of school as well.
Even law school.
My interaction with my classmates and the faculty at law school was more inspirational than almost anything in the formal curriculum. Students and faculty bring a wide set of experiences and viewpoints to an educational environment, and that provides fertile ground for a lot of important growth.
People don't necessarily think about academic or academic/professional training as fostering creativity, but the best graduates are incredibly creative.

 

[VinceInMT]

I think a university education is a great way to start a life of self-teaching.

Or, in my case, a way to enrich oneself in later life.

I took up photography as a serious amateur in 1973 and always pursued it as an avocation while my working career was in other areas. A couple years after retirement, well into my 60s, I enrolled in a BFA program at a local university where I am now 2 classes away from graduation. My areas of concentration are drawing and photography. What I have learned has changed me in numerous ways, improving both what I draw, what I photograph, and how I visualize.

It's never too late for formal education.

 

[removed account4]

the whole learning process helps if the person being taught wants to learn... and is humble enough to realize they don't know as much as they think. Self-taught, School of Hard-Knocks, BFA, MFA,BS, BA Vocational Training, Apprenticeships, no point in doing any of these things unless the person wants to learn.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I just realized that my post may seem a non sequitur, as it begs experience form another thread. Apologies.

So...

how did you get to your present mastery of our craft? What do you think of the ways to get there?

I firmly believe in a formal education as in colleges and universities but much can be earned rom books and workshops if one is interested in the subject. Learning from books is not for everyone.Some need a dialog with the teacher to truly understand. Others, benefit from reading and learning at their own time and pleasure.In the end, the results are what matters; many great photographers were self-taught and many formally educated photographers suck!

 

[Ko.Fe.]

How many people left on this planet, who knows about nazis?
It just a word for uneducated, clueless and lazy masses now.

 

[Cholentpot]

How many people left on this planet, who knows about nazis?
It just a word for uneducated, clueless and lazy masses now.

The term has been appropriated and watered down to the point of banality. Where I come from you wouldn't dare sling that label around because too many people around my parts have suffered from them first hand.

Online? It's just another insult.

 

[MattKing]

Online? It's just another insult.

Not for a lot of us who are of an age to have had parents experience WWII.

 

[Sirius Glass]

And to push the students minds in directions that they would never find on their own. That is the one of the few draw-backs of being 'self-taught'.

That is why it is good to read and study diverse views and opinions.

And then there are workshops, which I have found challenging and thought provoking.

 

[Mr Bill]

Not for a lot of us who are of an age to have had parents experience WWII.

My father was drafted into the US army and became part of a medical supply depot, same as his own father in WWI. He was part of the D-day invasion on Normandy, but halfway to shore they recalled his boat. There was not enough land captured to put them ashore, and as medics they were not armed. As a kid, playing "army" with my friends, we were disappointed that he hadn't been an armed fighting soldier, like other fathers in the neighborhood. Only as an adult did we (my siblings and I) learn that his company (or whatever it's called) had been the ones who spent a couple of days retrieving bodies from the surf.

Later they passed through Buchenwald. Patton, I think it was, had a standing order for all of the soldiers, on their time off, to visit the death camp and observe the truth of what had happened there. I realize now how astute Patton was about media dishonesty, that the more people who actually witnessed the piles of bodies, the harder it would be to cover up in the press.

Now, my pop would not have had any animosity towards people who fling the term nazi around casually. But I see them as people who magnify how rough the world is on them, just ignorant due to a lack of life experience. The same way I was ignorant about earlier years, and so on.

 

[Doremus Scudder]

Very true...some people are quite capable of open-ended exploration. Without a mentor or teacher, most people see what they want to see, read what agrees with their way of thinking, never have to question themselves, etc. Being overly influenced by one's teachers is a big drawback of a university art program. Every path will have positive qualities and drawbacks..and ways to deal with both. So much depends on what one wants to learn.

Some people never stop learning and some people learned everything they needed to learn decades ago. A university art education takes two to six years, give or take depending on the degree. Then after that, it is being self-taught for the rest of one's life. It is a mistake to think that graduation is a stop to learning. I think a university education is a great way to start a life of self-teaching. But being self-taught or having an art degree is no garuantee of the quality of one's study.

Cholentpot -- Definitions I have read of "outsider art" is much different than you have stated.

Don't get me wrong, I think formal education is a great thing. At last count, I spent 17 years studying at various institutions of higher learning. That said, the last 10 years or so of those were largely an exercise in "self-teaching," i.e., doing research, studying and practicing on my own, writing and performing and then getting a bit of more-or-less useful feedback at the end of the semester. The only real exception was coaching with excellent pianists and performers who had years of experience and knew the repertoire and performance practices better than anyone else alive. This, however, is a passing on of musical traditions and multi-generational knowledge that could not be done in print. For many things, reading and experimenting by oneself is an equally viable option as long as one has the self-discipline.

Self-teaching is decidedly more difficult that getting things from a teaching environment, especially when it is a good one, but it's not necessarily a dead end.

Best,

Doremus

 

[Vaughn]

That is why it is good to read and study diverse views and opinions.

And then there are workshops, which I have found challenging and thought provoking.

Very true. There will always be exceptional students...either self-taught, formally educated, or a hybrid of formal education and self-taught. And on all paths, there will be lousy students who barely 'pass' and those who fail. The solely self-taught who are not great students and do not get out in the world much perhaps run a greater risk of the Dunning-Kruger effect...they do not know what they do not know. Hopefully, the formally educated would get enough feedback to realize it, but alas, not always true. Mediocre students make it thru universities probably at the same rate as mediocre students make it thru life being self-taught.

I think a well conceived and taught workshop, coupled with a good group of participants, is easily equal to a university experience of the same intensity. While selection of which workshops to attend is important and is a personal choice, I consider workshops to be part of a formal (or taught-by-others) education, and not of a 'self-taught' education. Someone who is self-teaches and also attends workshops is perhaps getting a hybrid education.

 

[Cholentpot]

Not for a lot of us who are of an age to have had parents experience WWII.

At least your parents got a gun and a chance to fight. No so much my Grandparents.

No, I don't like seeing the term bandied around but at some point you can't fight the ocean.

 

[MattKing]

At least your parents got a gun and a chance to fight.

My Mom was too young, and my Dad spent his WWII service time in the RCAF mostly running Radio Direction Finding and Radio equipment in relatively remote areas on the west coast of Canada (in what is now known as Haida Gwaii).
They made him learn how to shoot though, before they taught him how to use his Morse Key.
So my Dad spent much of WWII and the next year or so with headphones on - that was how the Radio Direction Finding (precursor to RADAR) equipment worked - sound rather than a screen.

 

[Cholentpot]

My Mom was too young, and my Dad spent his WWII service time in the RCAF mostly running Radio Direction Finding and Radio equipment in relatively remote areas on the west coast of Canada (in what is now known as Haida Gwaii).
They made him learn how to shoot though, before they taught him how to use his Morse Key.
So my Dad spent much of WWII and the next year or so with headphones on - that was how the Radio Direction Finding (precursor to RADAR) equipment worked - sound rather than a screen.

My Grandfather spent the war years running across Europe with the Germans only minutes behind at times. He made it to Russia but was thrown into a Gulag because he was German right? Never mind that Germany didn't want him anymore. He then escaped from Party Hall Gulag and walked/hopped trains down to Uzbekistan and finished the war there. Grandfather B never spoke about what he went through but it involved much of the same. Except he didn't escape Gulag the same way, he left a body count. Grandma was a Red Army nurse who skipped motherland after war to find Grandpa.

Kudos to your Pops for manning the RADAR. I heard some nasty stories from vets growing up about those early RADAR setups. Involved a few people being cooked.

 

[MattKing]

Kudos to your Pops for manning the RADAR. I heard some nasty stories from vets growing up about those early RADAR setups. Involved a few people being cooked.

There were three major areas of risk for my father:
1) RCAF food;
2) Bears!;
3) A huge percentage of those operators came out of the war with hearing damage - the headphones were far from being workplace safe. In his later years, my Dad finally got around to applying for and being granted a Veteran's pension and benefits because of that (partial) hearing loss.
Dad left the service in early 1947, and never used Morse code again, but to the day of his death at age 94 he could read and decode Morse code.

 

[Cholentpot]

There were three major areas of risk for my father:
1) RCAF food;
2) Bears!;
3) A huge percentage of those operators came out of the war with hearing damage - the headphones were far from being workplace safe. In his later years, my Dad finally got around to applying for and being granted a Veteran's pension and benefits because of that (partial) hearing loss.
Dad left the service in early 1947, and never used Morse code again, but to the day of his death at age 94 he could read and decode Morse code.

Read a book on the USS Tang. Sonar guys would forget to turn down the set before the depth charges would blow.