How did you learn photography?

Pre-Internet by decades.....

Pre-Internet by decades.....

Before Al Gore and I invented the internet, I used to pore through photo mags for information. Most of it was advertising.

So, I finally tore out one of those coupons for NYIP... New York Institute of Photography, which, decades ago, was purely snail mail with critique cassette tapes. 27 lesson plans as I recall.

I recall it with great respect and think it was nicely done and fit my learning style.

Otherwise, I started out in the fifties with a Brownie Hawkeye and many, many cameras and thousands of rolls of film later, I am still not that good a photographer.

But I am an incredible "Gear Hog". GAS is my middle name.
 
I am on RFF quite a bit and I can't figure out how I always end up posting on P. 5 or maybe P. 10. Does anyone read all these pages or am I just writing to myself. When I started college I had a friend that had a darkroom. He showed me a few basics and I was hooked. I took a course in photo journalism at the college and the instructor told me to go to the Art Dept and take some graphic design classes. After one year, the Art Dept started teaching what they called "Creative Photography". I never looked back and got my degree in Art and Photography. I worked as a professional for a few years and then taught photography for 5 years. I stopped photographing for about 15 years and then started again. I very serious about it now just as much as I have ever been. - Jim
 
Interesting stories... and that many here had a pre-teen start. My dad had a mild interest but that wasn’t conveyed to me. I was about 23 when I got into photography, and stationed overseas with the USAF. My mother, bless her, had insisted I take a camera, so I got a box Brownie but was lax in using it and sending home the snaps.

Then on quiet night shifts I got to talking with a guy down the hall in Base Ops who was a photo enthusiast. It caught, as he had access to the base photo lab after hours.. I found that my Brownie 127 had two f/stops, Sunny and Cloudy Bright. And two shutter speeds; flash door closed and flash door open. So I had about 6 stops exposure range to play with, leading to better pics. My photo friend persuaded me to get a better rig, my first 35, scale-focus and leaf shutter. Off-duty I would walk the 18 miles either to or from town, different routes, and all over the city, finding subjects that I wouldn’t have seen without the photo enthusiasm.

On the way back to duty in the States I had some leave in Istanbul and Paris, and that time was photo-intensive, same as vacations now. I worked part-time in the camera shop in town near the air base, meeting a wide variety of others with photo interests. I met a memorable wannabee, rich kid who bought a big Nikon kit, traded it for Hasselblads, traded that gear for Leicas, turned that stuff in for Bolex equip, and sadly never made good use of any of it. And got to know my first elitist, the store half-owner too good to wait on customers, upstairs framing his latest masterpieces. He used Hasselblad exclusively, and did know which side was up. I had free use of all the used camera gear, and bought my first Pentaxes.

Out of the military and back to college and work, I found how stultifying it can be in a big “formal” camera club. Interesting resources and events, but rigid thinking. I had a darkroom set up in an apartment closet, read the magazines, read each month’s issue of the Encyclopedia of Photography, 25+ volumes (not sure if that’s the same as Ezzie mentioned). And wandered Seattle with two cameras around my neck. Anyone else buy into correspondence classes with the Famous Photographer’s School? Modern School of Photography? 🙂

Later, having moved out of the big city, and self-employed, I took a class or two each quarter at the local university for several years: All the photography offered plus individual studies (yeah, Oh Two, under Jim Sahlstrand!), art history, color theory, design, calligraphy, etc. Saw “academic photography” as a genre. Had half of a two-man show at the local gallery.

As others have mentioned taking breaks from photography, so have I, and then I’ll get back into it in a somewhat different way. I skipped the 1990’s and SLR featuritis. I’ve learned from RFF and other sites online, and taking on challenges in my way of making photos. But, as a former mechanical engineer, I can’t escape a liking for the gear. 😀
 
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I got a 15 min lesson from my father on his Pentax Spotmatic before going on a trip to Zimbabwe. I was hooked after I saw the pictures.

After then it was books, magazines, the internet and huge amounts of experimentation.
If I was to do a course now it would be with a master printer/fine art darkroom pro to fine tune my printing.
 
I broke my leg during the summer between Junior/Senior year of high school. As you can imagine, I was helpless, and bored. My mom was nice enough (as she always is), to buy me a cheap Canon. During that summer, and the following year and a half, I shot, shot, shot, as well as taking a summer class at RIT, in Rochester New York. Once in college at the University of Rochester, and subsequently the University of Vermont, I pursued the endeavor further, taking every photography class available. Although I don't shoot professionally these days, I will forever be in love with photography (particularly film photography), until the day I die. Who knew that a broken leg could lead to such great passion!
 
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Started as a kid with an Agfa Speedex B2 that my stepfather gave me circa 1960-61. Took a year of photography in high school using a Yashica J rangefinder a friend gave me around 1967-68. Then, on my own for 11 years. Another class after college and then on my own for the last 30 years. Will be taking a couple classed at the local community college starting in January.

Classes help and are different than sharing and discussing online but the basics and more are easily learned through self study IMO.
 
I started learning the basics from my father when I was 10 y.o.
Later, he gave me a book I still keep, and for about three years I didn´t do so much in photography until I placed my then dirty hands on dad´s new Voigtländer Vitomatic IIb.
Later in 1970 I took a basic lab training at the Gas del Estado Club which was the only formal training I had.
Since then, I buy photography books and magazines, from where I learn a lot.
The same applies for the Internet forums I visit where I found a lot of good photographers eager to share the knowledge they have of this illness with other people.

Ernesto
 
Still learning.

Not sure when I got started initially. I remember Brownies and various other cameras, none of which were mine or belonged to anyone in my immediate family. My first camera was a Minolta SRT101 w/ 50mm Rokkor-X lens. Most of my learning was through magazines and trial and error until I got up enough courage to enroll in a beginning photography class back in the mid '70's.

I had also purchased Ansel Adams' first unedited photographic book series when they first came out. I still have them. The revised editions are easier to read. Ansel was a bit too technical in the early unedited editions particularly when it came to explaining the Zone System. I burned a lot of film and made a lot of mistakes and then I stopped completely because life happens.

Luckily, I kept my cameras and rediscovered photography about a year ago. Tried the digital thing but I prefer film and so, it was back to a beginning photography class at the local community college to re-learn the basics and then some. I think having stopped using a camera, then coming back to it after a couple of decades has helped me appreciate photography more.

I've since bought myself a 4x5 Chamonix 45n-2 and have begun the process of learning large format photography.
 
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Photography has always been an on/off thing with me. No one in my family is into photography. But it probably all started when I became extremely curious with a 35mm P&S RF that I won in a contest in the boy scouts.

But it continued to be an on/off thing with me. My first semi-serious camera was when my son was born. I purchased a Sony DSC-F717. With it I started learning tricks with DoF & shutter speed. I always tinkered with the pictures that came out of that camera converting images to B/W and other fun things.

The madness did not truly begin until I met my GF. Her father passed aware quite some time ago, but he left a small collection of SLR cameras behind from the 70s with her. Although she is not interested in photography, she had always been curious if any of his cameras work. One of those cameras is the Konica T3 and her father had a few Hexanon lens with it. I started reading up on how under rated Konica glass has always been and was intrigued. With the F717, I was always trying too hard to create B/W pics. Now I see the perfect opportunity to do real B/W photography.

Unfortunately, her father's T3 is a bit beat up and the metre is not working. Instead of sending it out to be repaired and oiled up, I ended up purchasing an extremely clean and fully functioning Konica T3N from the bay for only $50. I'm also slowly building up my Hexanon glass collection.

My GF is now intrigued and would even like a simple 35mm camera of her own, and that's the main reason I came here in hopes of getting great support in a photography community and soon with a RF I will have for her.

So far, I'm only shooting Kodak BW400CN, I will soon be experimenting with TX film and who knows what else I may come across. 🙂
 
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