Formal Education?

[LaFoto]

Well, no training whatsoever.
No classes in school. No classes later. No studies. Nothing.
Just the camera and I and a couple of ideas that my dad or uncle communicated through their own photography ... and for at least 20 years, if not for 30, my photography was worse than bad.
Actually I am only learning now. Through TPF. No kidding.

 

[Libby]

No formal training. I read books, and mostly learned by trial and error. If I had questions, I asked people at local photography stores I trusted. Considering after less than a year I had professionals wanting to team up on shoots and asking me for tips on how best to photograph live concerts when flashes aren't allowed, I think all went well. The only thing I’d really like to take a class on one day is studio lighting.. flashes are not my friend, even today. A speedlight with a dome diffuser is as far as I get. My personal opinion is, no matter how many classes you take on how things are supposed to go, it’s still nothing to actual experience. That could just be my bias though, since I do few portraits and mostly candids. I've been doing photography since I was 12, so that will be 11 years this June.

 

[Majik Imaje]

RIGHT ON.. .. Libby ! ..Just from reading your sentences I can see the "spunk" and drive you got! good for you . .yes get out there.. don't be afraid to walk into a pro studio with your portfolio and just ask! Got time to LOOK ?

I did it all the time.. with T.V stations, Studios, Everyplace I could think of to show my pics and get MORE INFORMATION..

get a good book on studio lighting.. ! save your money! read at home! nice glass of wine.! much better.. Light is light..! how to use it is pretty straigthforward.. I am speaking STRICKTLY AS SOMEONE who knows absolutly NOTHING ABOUT IT. and i am 100% serious.. yes I am an electrican but I know nothing at all about photograhic lighting.. using lights.. ! so there.. BUT... ha ha.. here it comes.. I do know.. what I have read.. in a 3D program called 3D studio Max it has real world physics and lights ! LIGHTS.. oh.. I know how to play with lights!!! but only in a 3d program THIS IS NOT a photograph...(blushing)!


but I bet you have to look "twice" or more.

get a 3d program there's lots of free ones.. "blender" you can learn lighitnig the easy way.. RIGHT ON YOUR COMPUTER. how do I know this?

because I keep reading these words.. when reading tutorials.. "Using a standard 3 light setup" two front lights @ 45 degree angle and one Key fill in light. you can actually practice moving lights and seeing the actual results very easily.. WOW.. WHAT A FUN way to learn lighting!

(wink) www.caligari.com

 

[neea]

Wow. I've been gone a few days and never expected to get this many replies. No time to read them all now but I will later today/tonight.

One thing I've liked so far is what hertz van rental said "but the formal qualifications meant I understood the why of things - which is important".

I think for some people this is important. It's important to me when I'm doing math which is why I hate algebra (no one on earth seems to really know WHY algebra works).
For me photography is more about being creative and expressing it. The technical stuff I learn only to improve my expression and make it look better.

 

[Iron Flatline]

Formal. I studied photography in New York City in the mid 1980s. I have continued taking courses over time because it forces me to think about photography and breaks me out of the habits I have. Courses like "Photographing Architecture" make you think about lighting and composition differently than shooting people on the street or landscapes in the desert.

 

[elsaspet]

Wow, gone a week or two, and you miss the whole shineola.
Ok Majik, I give. I've gone to your website, and even though I can navigate around PS pretty well, your site confuses me. How to the gallery? It's got so much stuff going on, I'm totally confused.
I just want to know how you made all these mega millions............


Btw: No formal training for me, unless you count Hertz and being screamed at by my first agent.

 

[Jim Gratiot]

I was OBSESSED and I had to read, sleep, eat, and dream.. .. "photography"!

Right there is the KEY to success in photography.

 

[newrmdmike]

i am currently getting the formal education . . . and am for the most part very dissapointed with it.

i learned more from a professor at a 2 year school than anything the 4 year school i'm at has even shown knowledge of. i think that formal education can be good, but for the most part who you are or will become as a photographer is up to yourself and the education you seek on an individual level.

i have however been to seminars that immediatly bettered me at the craft.

 

[neea]

It's got so much stuff going on, I'm totally confused.
I just want to know how you made all these mega millions............

I agree. Twice. I've been to Majik Imajes' website.
And I too would like to know how these millions were made.

I am definatley not in this for the money. If anything it's been quite the opposite. I have no problem spending money on photography.

I do one day hope to make a little extra cash from it. Basically just to buy more equipment.
I will one day set up a darkroom and maybe a small studio to do portraits for local people as well as sell prints of my 'art' pictures.

People always ask 'If you're so into photography why don't you go to school for it. But like a few of you have said here, I don't think I'd learn anything more in school than I could through books. No one can teach you how to have an eye for this stuff or to be creative. That should be natural. It's all technical from there. With the exception of always developing your creativity.

It's good to see that this is a field based more on who you are and what you see that others dont instead of how many fancy pieces of papers you have on your wall.

Thank you everyone for your response.

 

[Hertz van Rental]

No one can teach you how to have an eye for this stuff or to be creative.

This is not actually true. It can be taught - up to a point.
And if you do have an 'eye' the right teacher can help you develop it, whereas it is likely to remain undeveloped if you try to teach yourself everything.

 

[Efergoh]

This is not actually true. It can be taught - up to a point.
And if you do have an 'eye' the right teacher can help you develop it, whereas it is likely to remain undeveloped if you try to teach yourself everything.

+1

I never considered myself to be a very creative person, but my instructors taught me how to challenge myself. It is one thing to have an idea, but it is another to take that idea to it's limits...

We can't all be Ansel Adams.

 

[Ab$olut]

Non yet hopefully end of this year I will be starting a college course and maybe risking the plunge of uni debt after..

 

[Aquarium Dreams]

Forgive my naivete, but isn't one of the perks of college the environment? Some people might find experienced mentors and driven like-minded peers in their hometown, but for those of us who live in rural or suburban areas, that might not be an option. A person might learn more from and be inspired by their peers and their environment when they are one of two hundred people on a tiny campus that study photography, versus one of twenty (in theory- that's if you can even locate the others) serious photography students in a three-county region. It's easier and more encouraging to eat, sleep, and breathe photography when you can see and interact every day with people who are on the same diet, so to speak. Self-motivation is great, the internet is great, but I'd love to be able to walk two blocks to a coffee shop and talk photography or art (or anything besides sports and weather and Anna Nicole Smith) with a random stranger and fellow-student who happens to be hanging out there. In my perhaps naive view of things, I would be willing to pay tuition just to be saturated in an artistic environment, and to be able to make that my whole life, instead of trying to work it around two jobs, some community college classes, and the locals who don't get it because everyone with a 5mp digital camera is a photographer.

/rant

 

[Majik Imaje]

... .. ONLY.. My opinion" that is all.. My opinion is this
obtain and read a book written BY ANY famous photograher.. sit down.. guess what??
Your in the same room with that famous person and he / she is speaking directly to you.. "pay attention" your in THEIR SCHOOL! read their words.
Until you can understand what they say.. then GO OUT AND PRACTCIE doing what they said to do!
now your going to develop your own style based on which words you have retained in your "database" as being IMPORTANT.
I totaly stink at web design.. and I will be the first to admit it.
I got no problem ever admitting when I am WRONG. yeah my site sure needs a lot of work.
clicking on the grahix Logo or sign on the main page takes you to a gallery! I guess it is invisible?
clicking on the map takes you to another gallery or using the java buttons at the bottom bring you to many places but to enter the two diffeernt galleries.. htm or html brings you to each of them.. One gallery only has 5 images showing with mouseovers to reveal the other 5.
http://majikimaje.com/gallery.htm
OR
http://majikimaje.com/gallery.html
Mega MILLIONS? WHO? WHERE ? how ?
Oh yes! I have made a ton of money off not only my Eskimo images but allways.. in all ways!
yes I was offered 100k for the rights to Daisy Della Fay's image http://majikimaje.com/dellafay.jpg
but I turned that down.. on the advice from a Professional Art Gallery in Peabody Mass.. Prestige Gallery (owners now deceased).
I have made way more than 100k just off that one image, by selling it for 20 years or more. 25 years to be exact.. I take each day.. one at a time.. my sole purpose.. is to make enough money to GET OUT OF THE ELECTRICAL TRADE.. I hated it.. ! I made fantastic money, but I wanted a much nicer way to spend the day and make as much or more.. THAT WAS MY MAIN GOAL.
All of my images together have made us just over! but that is over a long period of time.. I have kept good records.. of all my sales since 1973
Every day.. I am out there with portfolio.. but I have to take time out.. to go to work for the day at some noisy dirty filthy construction site and it is a very vulgar work enviorment!
Yeah I was driven.. lunch time.. where can I go ? with my portfolio.. you acutaly think I am going to waste time sitting there listening to the stuff they all talk about? ha ha.. NOPE. I can eat whilel I am driving down the block to that photo studio or that new busienss that just opened.. I want to make money! so when I get up.. I can just go to my darkroom and relax..and enjoy the day.. so I think.. I have a certain amount of skills
I have a darkroom with plenty of paper , chemicals film and plenty of room for 5 more people..
you got a garage ? a place to put a darkroom that can hold two people plus yourself.. ??
then put an add in the paper. start to teach people.. what you have learned. and they will pay you for it. I always got $5,000 just in student
enrollment into my little school.. Learn how to print your own color enlargements.. 200 bucks 25 students 5k I did that 6 times a year for many years. I sell my photos at work, to complete strangers.. I am alwsya on the go.. selling myself, my skills, my work. MY OBESSION!
then I did what you need to SEE with your own eyes.. MY WORK.. speaks for itself.. I got nothing to add. "A photograph is worth a 1,000 words"
even if those words are to correct what was done wrong!
I have done a lot WRONG Since the days of shirley hurley, In Oct of 69.
but I have also done a lot of things RIGHT.!

 

[Majik Imaje]

I had to break this post into two parts because it was 1,552 characters over the 10,000 limit



THAT IS HOW I KNOW beyond any shadow of doubt.. YOU.. yeah YOU!
CAN DO THE SAME THING.. all you gotta do.. is follow the same steps I did .. all I did was take photographs.. and get out and sell them.
I once made $14,000 just by doing something totally STUPID!...
I AM not ever afraid to admit the truth..
one morning I woke up to make a phone call to a Fairbanks Alaska Insurance company.. I had gotten hurt and I was collecting workers comp checks.. I never ever FORGET a number.. a name sure all the time.. but numbers stick with me like glue.. forever!
but this one morning I just could not remember that number which I had been callling for over a year and a half. so I picked up an Anchorage phone book.. to look for a phone number in Fairbanks.. doh! stupid
totaly stupid ,stupid ,
I grabbed the phone book and just opened it to a page and the word(s)
Umalik Insurance Company "jumped" off the page to meet my eyes.
Wow! that is an Eskimo word.! I know what that word Umalik means
that is a "whaling Captain" wow. guess what I got sittin here in my hotel room? 20 x 24" double matted gorgeous framed print of Umalik !
Guess where I am headed A.S.A.P. ? RIGHT TO THAT ADDRESS!
This is what I am carrying in a big huge portfolio canvas case with handles
The winner of the 1989 Alaska Press Award ! which was published in Alaska Magazine in Dec of 1990 it is January of 91.

I rememeber this day very very well. I had to walk 3 miles in snowing slushy steets and weather to reach this place.
I walk in.. go up to the receptionist and state my case.. My name is .. I have something I KNOW you are interested in. She looks at me quizzical and I say.. Umalik? that's an Eskimo word meaning whaling captain.. she smiles and says I know THAT. I bring out and show her this image all framed, ready to go on their wall.. (I want a check for $250!).. Nope THEY ARE NOT INTERESTED ONE BIT. hmmm ? what can I do "different". so as I am thinking this thought i turn around to plut the image back into the case. and I see that in the same lobby is another company.. UIC construction company.. hmmm? I have heard of them.. they are located in Barrow.. I go over to their desk.. I have an image that I think would look splendid on your OFFICE WALLS..(only because I notice some other smaller prints and art.) She picks up a phone and calls someone, who comes out to view the image and speak with me.
( I am holding my breath) and I can hold it really long, I have been practcing this move for 20 years ! I am excited,& very nervous.
a gentleman approaches me and I show him the image and he says wow. I will be right back.. (now my fingers are crossed and I am still holding my breath)
A young lady comes out, and says, that is very very nice.. but we need a photographer.. I said with some humor. here I am.. that was quick eh?
she laughed and said.. NO WE NEED SOMEONE REALLY REALY GOOD!
I took the hint and LEFT. I went right to a bookstore and got a book on photographic contracts.. and went back to the room to read. and typed up directly from the book a "delivery memo" and I sent this, that day, out in the mail, with 2 pages of 35mm slides of my work. NEXT WEEK. I got a reply.. wow.. they took the "bait' it worked.
We have 23 contstruction projects in Barrow we want photographs taken of. these 23 projects are all finished. We need good representative shots and angles for our clients to view for future projects and such.
I rush back to the hotel room and draw up a contact, using the examples in that book I had just purchased.
My friend says to me.. what are you going to charge them ? I said I don't now yet.. He said.. Just charge them what you make as a journeyman electrican $250 per day. I laughed and said NO WAY.. I am reaching for the MOON on this one.. $ 650 a day PLUS EXPENSES!
I am going to be up here (if I can convince them, 23 days!) I am going for broke on this.. and I did .. I filled it all out.. and we had a meeting..
THEY ACCEPTED AND SIGNED THE CONTRACT! whoo hooo!!
I request 1/2 down in advance.. ( I didn't even own a camera at the time)
I went out and spent 7k just like that on new equipment.
Now the big laugh is on them.. Man were these people STUPID.
why ? they sent me up to Barrow in January to take photographs of outside construction projects. ha ha ha.. There is no light in Barrow in January! or most of February! ha ha ha.! I am sitting in my hotel room, very nice.. all meals and phone calls are paid, they even pay for processing of all the film. My chaufeer arrives at 10:30 a. m. and we go out for a two hour ride.. THAT'S IT.. that is all I could work each day.
Two hours! yeah I made a bundle on that job.
REMEMBER HOW THIS ALL STARTED ? all I did was see a name.. that I could recognise in a phone book! Umalik !
14,000 in less than two weeks is a lot of MONEY!
do that ten, twenty, thiry times.. yeah.. your gonna make a lot of money!
I just had to tell you that TRUE STORY!! and I sure hope.. somehow someway, you gather some small inspiration from it!
now get out and you can do the same thing.. in a smaller way..AT FIRST!
You cannot reach the top of that ladder.. UNITL you place your foot firmly on STEP ONE... and after a short time.. YOUR GOING TO PLACE YOUR FOOT.. on step TWO.. and after a short while YOUR GOING TO begin the climb. as we all do.. and I still do.. I am not going to stop now. I am JUST GETTING STARTED!
i AM NOTHING, I AM NO BODY.. just an electrican that hates that trade and fell in love with photography as a much better way of life!
FORMAL TRAINING.? nope.. you DON'T NEED IT! take it from an EXPERT!
I mean absolutely no disrespect what so ever.. but this site has an extremly distiingusied "presence" here. tops ot the tops. YOU CAN'T GET HIGHER.. than this man.! #1 He is Brillilant in HIS FIELD..TOP GUN so to speak..
What color are the darkrooms in that college sir ?
how come NONE OF YOUR IMAGES ARE POSTED HERE?
my images are sold all over the world.. every day.! and I am nothing but no one.. just a crumb.. flick me away.. BUT I WONT GO AWAY..
not until I teach these "INTERNET STUDENTS"... that are seeking knowledge.. and hands on skills.. just by reading words on a page!
I am going to sit here and type.. SO THAT YOU can learn and accomplsih what I did.. pay attrention to EVERY WORD you read!
all I did was spot one word.. in a phone book.. that led to over $14,000 bucks in less than two weeks!. Upon returning to Anchorage, they reviewed all the slides that were processed.. then they had to pay more.. for each image they chose to keep! 30 images @ 500 per.
I had to save the BEST FOR LAST! YEAH! I know how to make money with photographs! you betcha. and I want to teach you the same steps.
but when you go out and try thiese methods.. guess what is going to happen..?? people are going to say this word to you,, they are going to say no. I DON'T EVER QUIT.. UNTIL I GET MY WAY.so be prepared for that word.. just don't believe it and find someplace else to turn or go. DON'T EVER GIVE UP.. cause if you give up..YOUR DREAM IS DEAD.
I don't know why?? I am still here.. honest.. somehow I have survived 5 heart attacks and 3 storkes and lost most of my eye sight.. but I am still at it constantly.. !! but now my four sons are playing the "music" so to speak.. I am just the CONDUCTOR!
Grab your camera, put in a new roll of COLOR get out, shoot it up. NO LGHT METER.. and take notes.. ! your looking to take photos of ANYTHING that you can SELL. NOW LEARN to "develop" your imagination!
see you all on another thread someplace!
Oh .. by the way.. that framed print?
I gave that away for free! to the person in that photo.. Rex Rock UMALIK
to this day, it is still hanging in his house here in Point Hope.. !
And.. Rex.. is the Godfather to all my four sons! He is a very successful Whaling Captain!