How did you learn photography?

Another self-taught photographer here. I don't think the technical basics of photography (aperture, shutter speed, DoF, metering etc.) are really that hard to master & certainly don't require formal training. It's all that "mushy" creative stuff (understanding composition, framing, light, etc.) that's difficult, @ least for me.

Gear-wise, I started out w/point & shoots only on vacation about 15 years ago, progressed to using point & shoots in daily life about 11 years ago, & then quickly made the big retro leap to mostly manual RFs in 2000 because they were almost as small as point & shoots, but more versatile & just plain more fun to use.
 
Learned photography. Not yet. I keep making the same mistakes but with different results. Life is short. Keep shooting.

Actually, my dad taught me some of what I know when I about 10 or 11 years old. He had an Exa and a Weston meter. Very cool looking stuff that I coveted even when I before I learned to walk; in my baby pictures, you'll frequently see me teething on his never-ready case. I guess I am still in the teething stage fifty years later.
 
I learned through books and magazines and like most posters .. trial and error. My success rate really jumped when I came across RFF almost 5 years ago. The many tremendously great photos here in the gallery have really opened my photographic eyes and helped me make pretty good shots, for me that is. I'm still learning and shooting daily. I'll never stop!
 
[FONT=&quot]Self taught; you read/learn how to perform some of the more technical aspects of the endeavor,
then trial/exploration and before you know it you got a monkey on your back. 😱
[/FONT]
 
I havn't learnt photography yet but I'm at it.
Started shooting slides decades ago but it was not untill 1998 I realy started to take it seriously. Traded my OM gear for a Nikon F90X and later added a 24mm and 105 makro bought tons of magazines, books and slidefilm. Became a member of a photoclub and joined up with 2 likeminded naturephoto geeks and my color photography just evolved from there. Later I started shooting B&W but I havn't learned that yet. APUG, LF forum and RFF among others are great sources to learn from so time will tell if I ever get it 🙂
Best regards
 
My girlfriend taught me, because she took it in college way back... She lent me an AF Nikon F60, a year ago to get me started.. out of first 2 rolls, only 4 images were completely usable (not blurry, properly exposed, nicely composed)..

then i bought a Nikon FM2n, and have been photographing ever since..
 
I have learned more in the short time that I have been reading RFF than I have in the previous 35 years . I am also fortunate in that, here in the north west (UK), there are a number of RFFers ,Sparrow, Bob France, Kuvvy and Xmas .We meet up on a regular basis. Their help has been invaluable.
Likewise Al Kaplin. I find his posts here both amusing and informative. Roger too. Books and web site.
 
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Well.. I learned photography from the camera manual that came with the Zenit-E. And I can tell you one thing; it wasn't about photography.. and it wasn't well translated either.

In hindsight, it's amazing that I actually managed to shoot for years and years while getting superb results without any notion that it's the aperture that controls depth of field. I knew that the shutter speed controlled motion effects, and dialed in the aperture to make the light meter needle match.. Given the limited range of shutter speeds (1/30-1/500 plus B), I now understand that I couldn't do much wrong anyway, and apertures tended to stay in the 'sensible range' given circumstances.
 
I bought a Minolta X370 and started snapping away! I also read lots of books on the subject! I got more and more interested in it as a hobby and bought a Minolta X700 for the additional features and control! After wearing out a couple of X700's I got a Canon T90 and another X700 to play with. I now have a Leica IIIf some Yashicas and a Konica or two.
Tom
 
I learn't to develop B&W film in a physics practical at university and was intruiged. So it was the technical side of things that attracted me first of all. I was given a Contax 139 as a birtday present, and spent a couple of years shooting that before finding rangefinders. In terms of learning photography (as opposed to learning about cameras), if all came down to reading (Amateur Photographer, Black&White Photography, books, photography sites), looking (galleries all over London, especially the Photographer's Gallery and one memorable show at Hackelbury) and shooting (a lot of film before I seriously tried digital). Reading, looking, and shooting.
 
Bought an SLR in the Army and read everything I could find. The Time-Life Photography series, magazines, books and then I used a lot of film. Now, over 40 years later I'm still doing the same, except I now shoot digital and learn from the internet too.
 
1. Being born with poor eyesight and being stunned by fluff on the carpet at 6 months old when my parents gave me glasses.
2. Repeatedly stunned with each new pair, arriving with no scratches, and seeing clearly all over again.
3. Interest in photographs from our earlier years as a teenager
4. Interest in gadgets.
5. Learning on my mother's Zeiss Ikon Contina II with a compur shutter. The EV value from the light meter was dialled up on the barrel and the various combinations of shutter speed and aperture were set and the choices were all appropriately linked.
f8 was in red and the hyperfocal distance for f8 was marked on the scale focussing 45mm lens. That machine was a lesson all on its own.
6. Andreas Feininger and Jacob Deschin books on photography bought in 1977. Bill Pierce's chapter in the Leica Manual from the '70s.
7. Thousands of poor photographs teaching me what doesn't make a good picture.
8. A trip to Italy in 1986 and acquiring a lighter set up in the M4-2 with 50mm Summicron, cf M2 + Summilux. Took a lot of good photographs then, over and above the beauty of the subjects.
9. Taking lots of photographs of my children.
10. Exponential increase in insight with a shallower increase in ability since joining here and photo.net in the last couple of years. This is partly looking at lots more pictures, but most important for any project of improving one's skills, it is also keeping the company of people more skilled than me. The properties of C41 and Tri-X, and the approach to exposing these and transparency films, the value of non-Leica lenses and the appreciation of my old M2 over my metered M are all things learnt on the forums.
11. Looking at my children's progress with photography and trying to emulate their originality.
 
Books and magazines in Chapter's (Canada's Barnes&Noble/Borders) + slide film + my weekly allowance back when i was in my mid-teens.
Initially tried landscape photography, but was soon drawn in to Life & NatGeo & Kertesz. From that point, I dropped all the landscape how-to's and started to follow these guys that "just went out to shoot" - which was my thinking back in the day - Winogrand, HCB, Erwitt, etc...
 
In 1981-82, I was taking classes in freehand drawing, fine art history, color & design, & composition. I wanted to learn how to develop film and print, so I took a basic photography class in 1983. After that, I read every photography book I could get my hands on, especially the three books by Ansel Adams, and Henry Horenstein's "B&W Photography, A Basic Manual."
 
I worked in a placce that had a darkroom and the kind people there mentored me in between my jobs making optical components.
 
I started when I was 12 during art classes (1977). My art teacher at the time set up a darkroom and myself and three buddies would spend lunch time developing prints. I remember using a Minolta 35mm compact with scale focusing.

By the end of high school we all had our own darkrooms at home. We all shot together on weekends which led to part-time weddings for me with an OM1 and Mamiya 645. I developed the B/W myself and had the colour processed.

Somewhere in the middle I lost my passion for taking photos. I think it was because I was taking pictures for money and to make ends meet when I never enjoyed doing so. I have the digital age to thank for getting me enthused again (and financial security).

Apart from what I learned at school, I have done no courses at all. I suppose I learn most from the appreciation of other people's work and a healthy respect for the common laws of composition.
 
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