There's a lot to be said for burying oneself in a darkroom and trying everything, making a lot of mistakes and then learning from them.
For years I labored in the vacuum of my darkroom, made every mistake in the book and learned what worked, why it worked and what didn't work and why it didn't work.
Several years later, when finally deciding to pursue photography as a career, I assumed that I really should get some formal training. What a surprise befell me!
Having spent so many cumulative months in a darkroom, it seemed that a Basic Photo/Darkroom Class wouldn't be necessary, since a I had a portfolio of work and had either won or placed in a few competitions.
Approaching an intermediate photography professor at interviews for evening extension classes at a university, it was suggested to me that my technical skills were too far along to learn much from his class, but I'd be better advised to take an advance workshop to refine my vision.
So I trudged along to the next interview, and after reviewing my portfolio, the next professor put his hands behind his neck, leaned way back in his chair and asked, "Why do want to take a class in photography?"
My response was, "I've never had any formal training, and thought it would benefit me."
To which the professor replied, "Well, I'll admit you to me class, but I can predict that you'll probably never want to take another one."
"I'll give it a shot," I said.
Took the class, and at the end of it he offered me the opportunity of participating on informal scholarship in his Master Workshop. For this, I was and am forever grateful.
THAT was the last class I ever took, and it was upon the completion of that term that my wings unfolded. With self-confidence I approached my new career, and within nine months I began an adjunct professorship at that same university.
The point to all this is that if you are motivated, have a ability to learn from reading and the time to learn on your own (read make mistakes on your own), you can either spend your money on a class (and then another class, and another) OR use that same money on consumables and achieve a better understanding of what the photographic process is all about.
And if you have questions, well, we're all here for you. (And that's something that wasn't available to me in the Dark Ages of the 1960's.)
(But some might say that having a teacher/mentor can make it easier. Maybe yes, is easier better? There's no substitute for the school of hard knocks.)
But books, there are many excellent books out there. Read them all. Every one has something at least a little different. As many ways as there are to skin a cat...
Even when you are reading the same thing in a different way, your learning is reinforced.
But read David Vestal, John Hedgecoe and every other you can get hold of, but even more look at the work of every photographer you can. Go back to the photography annuals of the 70's, 60's, 50's if you can find them. Sit in a well-stocked library and peruse the coffee table monographs of the greats, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Steichen, Stieglitz, Robert Frank, Phillipe Halsmann, Richard Avedon, David Douglas Duncan, Arthur Felig (Weegee), Diane Arbus, Margaret Burke White, Imogene Cunningham, Harry Callahan, Robert and Cornell Capa, Benedicat J. Fernandez, Sean Kernan, Jean Marie Simon.......the list goes on and on and on. And it never ends.
Just as the greatest writers have intimate knowledge of the writers before and around them, so too photographers need to know their peer and predecessors.
