Online service that teaches you how to recreate a photo

[rusuionut]

Hi everyone,

I'm a photographer and a developer, and today i was looking for an online service that would allow me to browse through photos, select one, and then give me the details of how to take a similar/same photo, with full details about the equipment, lighting, distance, location, time of the day, season, full list of tips and info. The details would be better given by experienced/professional users with the goal of helping beginner/unexperienced users improve their photographing skills.

And because i didn't found any service, I thought asking you if you think this would be interesting for you, and if yes, maybe i'll start building one .

Thank you for your feedback, any suggestions are more than welcome.

 

[480sparky]

The only way I can see this working is you hosting the images as well. In other words, you have complete access to the rights to the image as well as all the details, create a site, and provide a portal to the images and data that way.

I cannot see any way someone surfing the net is going to get that sort of information about images from search results.

 

[jovince3000]

That seem awfully convenient to have such resource on paper. Realistically though, that sound impossible to make. The first problem would be what 480sparky said, you need the right of publication of the images, or some way you can somewhat "lead" the viewer to the image out of your site and still give the information.

Then there's the problem of the actual content gathering, you need an awful lot of knowledge to compile such amount of information out of an image if you,re not the original poster of it. Further more, if the site is the open community kind where anybody can post "how they think it was made", there's good chances that you will have many "bogus" information. if it's the closed kind with only a select few with the knowledge required to compile that kind of information that can post, you will be crushed under the sheer amount of work you guys have to do. And I'd bet somebody would most likely be better out in the field practising than compiling that kind of information day in day out for others.

 

[rusuionut]

Thank you 480sparky and jovince3000 for your feedback, you are both right: it should be a closed circle of publishers, and publishers should use their personal work, rather than anonymous images from the Internet.

The way i imagine it to work, is similar to 500px, there should be two personas: the publishers and
the consumers.

Me, as a publisher, as a photographer, I have my personal portofolio, and i can upload some of my photos on the
newly created website, and i can add also details about how someone else can create exactly the same photo:
being it a portrait, landscape, architecture, macro,..., and when i upload it i give the website the rights
to display it to beginners who can experiment and create a similar photo.

Me, as a consumer, a beginner photographer, i browse the website, I find a photo which is something i dream
of doing something similar, and then i can use the details that the photographer of that photo has also attached
to the photo, to make a similar one.

Of course, there should be in place some kind of rewarding for the publishers, they need a motivation to upload
their work and also to describe the process of how they did it. And this is a subject that i don't know yet how it
can function, maybe the classical model where the consumer pays for the right to view the details for a specific
photo will be enough, so the publishers will have their motivation on creating content.

The only difference between 500px and this website is that if on 500px you pay to buy a photo, here you can pay
to buy the knowledge of doing that photo (which i think for beginners is more valuable than the photo itself).

 

[waday]

I'm in the 'probably not going to work' camp.

Aside from having a number of books that try something similar, one can already get the EXIF data off of several sites. Someone that knows a little bit about photography/lighting would be able to take that data and recreate the image.

Personally, I'm not interested.

 

[Braineack]

This has been invented, It's called: read photography magazines and blogs with how-to's.

 

[jovince3000]

The model in itself work on paper like I said previously.

Realistically again, that model has some flaw, even more so if you're planning on charging the customers.

first of all, with internet nowadays, that kind of information isn't hard to get for those that are willing to search a little.
There's literally millions of (***FREE***) tutorials out there that teach techniques and requirement to recreate a certain type of effect. What you're describing is essentially that, a tutorial website, except that instead of concentrating on teaching a technique to create an image, you have an already created image and teach the techniques around it ( which kinda sound similar if you think about it).
You can use publicity to generate revenue but you better have a serious amount of visit to the site before that can even handle the cost of the hosting. And publicity actually doesn't help to build a fanbase.

-There's also the publishing aspect, and the publisher himself. As a starter, you probably cannot afford to have other publisher and reward them in money other than your own self. You could potentially bring artist to publish on your website if you were popular, which would bring more popularity to the photographer themselves, but as a starter, that's not a very solid sell point.

 

[480sparky]

EXIF can only go so far. In a studio setting, there's many ways one can reverse engineer lighting, but far more difficult with some subjects.

And EXIF won't have any data on post work either.

 

[sm4him]

Kinda seems like the equivalent of giving people fish instead of teaching them HOW to fish.

Showing people how to recreate a particular photo, in my opinion, can actually be detrimental to their growth as photographers, because then they never learn how to understand for themselves what settings and equipment to choose for a given scene or situation. Sure, using a particular photo as an example in teaching about certain things is fine, and even digging into "how I took this photo" can be helpful in a classroom setting--but a whole website, full of "pick your photo and recreate it with the detailed instructions?"

I guess if color-by-number photography is what you're happy with, then sure. But it wouldn't be for me.

 

[Derrel]

The professor told the student who came up with the idea for Fed EX that his idea was not so good...
Online Extra Fred Smith on the Birth of FedEx - Businessweek

Maybe you'd get lucky. Who knows...

 

[rusuionut]

Thank you all, really good and relevant feedback.
Also, someone on the dpreview gave me the link to: 1X LEARNING - which is very similar to what i was thinking about.