The 'self taught' photographer

Larky said:
...that does not make you a teacher.
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Sorry, Larky, but I disagree as strongly with you as you disagree with me. I'm not talking about changing your teaching to suit your pupils needs and ability: anyone who's half competent would know that that you have to do that without being told.

But some kids don't, won't or can't learn certain subjects. Trying to teach me music, for example, is a complete waste of time. In a music class, you can try to get me to enjoy myself -- it works with folk music -- but I'll be a stumbling block to anyone wanting to learn notation or musical theory. Likewise a dancing class: I would only be there under duress. Or to change examples entirely, my brother is a bloody awful Latinist and not much better at French.

No teacher can please everyone, all the time. Anyone who thinks he can is a fool, and an arrogant fool at that. In the real world, with (say) 30 kids in a class, there has to be a certain degree of triage: those who want to learn, those who can be persuaded to learn, and those you want on your side but out of trouble. Spend too much time on the last group, and you are short changing the first two. They may flourish in someone else's classes: best of luck to them.

Although each side sometimes has difficulty in believing it of the other, both teachers and pupils are human beings, and human beings don't always take to one another or listen to one another. A good teacher tries; but if he thinks he can always succeed, there is no hope for him.

When I was teaching, I tended to be a lot more popular with pupils and their parents than with my fellow teachers. This was because I DID engage their interest and encourage them to think; anathema to a certain kind of teacher who wants to appear as the fons et origo of all knowledge.

One of the best complients I ever had was several years after I had given up teaching. A young man came up to me, and after establishing who I was and who he was, said, "Us thought us didn't learn f*** nothing in your classes, but looking back on it, us learned more there than in the rest of the f***ing school put together." (I was not, I hasten to add, his English teacher.)

I'd suggest that this may, in fact, qualify me as a teacher -- far better than an awareness of current or past fashions in educational theory, or a worthless piece of paper awarded me by ex-teachers (which, incidentally, I was given before I quit -- I am a DES recognized secondary school teacher).

EDIT: My late mother was a teacher; my late mother-in-law was a teacher; one of my oldest friends, a woman so close that I refer to her as my sister, is a teacher. I know or have known many others, including many excellent teachers: the latter both as a pupil, and among my fellow teachers.

But one of the reasons I left was that there are too many self-important twerps who have never left the classroom in their entire lives, merely jumping from one side of the teacher's desk to the other. The worst of them normally lectured other teachers.

FURTHER EDIT: Read what I said, that the 70s were a high point of incompetent teaching and worthless educational theory. From the way I read your letter, you seem to agree that this 40-year-old theory is worthless. This is why I was attacking it and suggesting alternatives. Or do I misread you?

Cheers,

Roger
 
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thorirv said:
what about the instances where people feel the need to point out that they are self tought? wonder why ... is it just a function of the excessive cv-ism we're living in, or a feeling of inferiority (if that's a word) of some sort for not having the formal training??
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I have no idea. Perhaps it's the same motivation that drives some people to point out that they have a degree in something? E.g. I do have Masters in CS/software engineering, and of opinion that it would be most silly and arrogant to scorn my many excellent colleagues who didn't went through any formal training in the field. If you just stop and list through the artists from top of your head am certain you'd find many of them did not have what you'd consider artistic scholarship.

My point just was that there hasn't to be degree in everything. Some areas of human knowledge are easier to tackle than others, a degree there might give a short head start but that's about it; in other fields you just can't be realistically self-taught.
 
OK, when I said most know only bad teachers maybe I was biased. I was a test year, had 7 English teachers in one year, 4 Math, 3 Physics. Not to be arrogant, but I ended up telling them how stuff worked. They knew nothing, and my frustration at that caused me to rebel and almost get kicked out of school. My experience at school and college was very bad, and I know a lot of people who had the same experience.

Roger, what you are saying now makes more sense to me (apart from that quote by the 'Us' boy!). I guess I'm a stickler for doing this right, with what I teach you start off with 50 people who are never going to get it (they come in as artists needing to learn physics, math etc) and we have to deliver differently to each student to enable them to understand. Some will never get it, but that issue comes down to what the expectations of the course were in the first place. Now I'm kind of in charge the students coming in know what to expect, and so the 'never going to be able to sharpen a pencil' students don't get on the course.

It's an ever decreasing problem if the students expectations are not what you are capable of delivering. Also it comes back to this idea of teaching them to learn, moving from surface to deep where required, understanding what type of learner they are and working with that. It depends upon what you are teaching, to how many students, the level of what you are teaching, the level of the students. It's nothing to do with intelligence either, as you said you will never learn music but that doesn't make you a fool. People make the assumption that the ability to learn is directly linked with I.Q, which is very wrong.
 
Leftist liberal speak, if you ask me. And I'm a left voting liberal-minded (European style left and liberal, mind you) person myself (without a danged Arts degree of any sort, thankyouverymuch).
 
Prior to university, my "education" ended after I got 'readin', 'ritin' an' 'rithmetic' down pat. After that it was years and years of abject boredom relieved occasionally by some useful social interaction.

There were some teachers who would sneak around the curriculum and gave us some real wisdom and encouragement but for the most part it was their job to turn us students into employable minions. Schools seem to be designed to look after young people while their parents work as well.

I respect the teaching profession, their's is the front line, so to speak, of the educational system.
 
PJRiley said:
I recently read an article about an artist who scorned 'self taught' artists. Her opinion was that you should have educational 'backup' i.e. a college degree before you call yourself an artist and expect people to pay for your work.
I don't agree. Aside from a correspondence course, I am self taught. I have a huge photography book library, and I study the work of other photographers I admire.
I learned my craft the hard way and I still do. When my work sells, I'm not the least bit uncomfortable, because I know the effort I've invested in my photography. (Money too!!😱)
How did you learn the craft, and what do you think of the artist's statement?
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I've taken several art courses and I didn't think much of them, to be honest. Seriously, most of the professors teaching the classes I took were into abstract expressionism and couldn't draw their way out of a wet paper bag. It was pretty much a case of just show up for all the classes and get an A. Seriously, one of them had us draw a crumpled paper bag; I literally scribbled on a sheet of paper and shaded the scribbles, just to see what would happen. I got an A on it. One teacher, when she got to the part about geometric formulas in art (something I had been looking forward to), said that this was one part she found to be pretty much useless. She actually said she had slept through those classes. I was outraged, and said so. I told her that it was far from useless if you ever hope to keep the parts of your drawings in scale. She said that if I thought I could do a better job, then I was welcome to get up there and try. Took her by surprise. I did. I taught that class on repeating geometric forms in art (fence posts, tiles, bridge abutments, and so on and how to get them in scale), how to use geometric formulas to place shadows, and so on. She was so mad that the papers she was holding were actually rattling in her hands (like I could give a damn -- that was, I think, one of the only days that anyone actually learned anything of any practical use). Anyone really trying got ridiculed -- by the teachers. "Why don't you just get a camera?" is something I heard every couple of days. "I'm doing it this way because nobody is much interested in the kind of crap you are peddling, and I've got about 50 magazines buying up everything I draw" didn't seem to make much of an impression on any of them.

Eventually, I did buy a camera. Found out I could be just as creative in a darkroom as I could be with a pen, pencils, paints, and etcetera. Never looked back. Sorry, but I'm still angry about my three years of art courses and this has turned into more of a rant than I originally intended. Frankly, I think whoever said that has got her head so deeply shoe-horned into her anus that she has no hope of ever seeing, producing or appreciating anything but her own crap ever again.
 
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PJRiley said:
I recently read an article about an artist who scorned 'self taught' artists. Her opinion was that you should have educational 'backup' i.e. a college degree before you call yourself an artist and expect people to pay for your work.
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Sounds like she's a bit conceited..
 
FallisPhoto said:
If you think nobody uses vanishing points anymore, and that nobody draws to scale, so the people are not bigger than the doors they have to go through, you are just wrong.
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Not necessarily. Consider many forms of iconography and (as far as I understand it) traditional Thai art, in which the most important characters are portrayed biggest.

All right, it's not 'nobody' but it further points up the importance of art history.

Cheers,

R.
 
Geometric formulas in art sound pretty important to me, if you're doing anything representational. Even if you're doing abstract, you need to know about drawing. At least that's how I would view it (from my well-known anti-intellectual perspective).

Actually, drawing a crumpled paper bag doesn't sound like a necessarily bad exercise either.
 
Still lifes, bowls of fruit, crumpled paper bags, vase of sunflowers. They can be tedious exercises. But a great still life can also be revelatory.

the skate-- jean-baptiste chardin
 

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Roger Hicks said:
Not necessarily. Consider many forms of iconography and (as far as I understand it) traditional Thai art, in which the most important characters are portrayed biggest.

All right, it's not 'nobody' but it further points up the importance of art history.

Cheers,

R.
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I know my art history. I have a BA in fine art, plus a lot of indepentent study credits beyond that. Egyptian art was much the same.
 
FallisPhoto said:
Pretty much all of realism fits. If you have a picture of a sidewalk, in front of a building with a door in it, you want to use a geometric diagram to figure out how tall the people in the distance, standing on the sidewalk, should be. Otherwise you are drawing giants or pigmies. If you are drawing a set of railroad tracks, receeding into the distance, there is another formula for figuring out how far to put the ties apart. [...]
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Well technically you don't need a formula for this, you just need to sketch a few diagonals. It's interesting, however I don't see where the art degree comes into play; I learned how to do this in school, 8th grade to be precise when we were taught perspective. I also don't see how knowledge of this makes anyone more of an artist who isn't inclined to drawing anyway.

Philipp
 
rxmd said:
Well technically you don't need a formula for this, you just need to sketch a few diagonals. It's interesting, however I don't see where the art degree comes into play; I learned how to do this in school, 8th grade to be precise when we were taught perspective. I also don't see how knowledge of this makes anyone more of an artist who isn't inclined to drawing anyway.

Philipp
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Those diagonals are geometric formulas. That is exactly the sort of thing that apparently bored my teacher to sleep when she was in school.

For a straight line of fence posts, for example, find your vanishing point, and lightly sketch a line from the top and bottom of the first foreground fence post to the vanishing point. This will show you how tall to make the second post, which you put in anywhere you want.

Now you need to think about regular spacing. As things recede into the distance, they not only look smaller, but they appear to be closer together. To make them appear regularly spaced, you next draw a line from the center of the first post to the vanishing point. Next, draw a line from the top of the first post, through the middle of the second post, and where it intersects the line that started at the bottom of the first post is where the third post will go. Now draw a line starting from the top of the second post through the middle of the third post and where it intersects the line that started from the bottom of the first post is where the fourth post will go. Continue doing this and it will show you where to put all the posts all the way out to the horizon. This is a geometric formula.

The same formula can be used for any regular repeating shape (tiles, bridge abutments, railroad ties, railroad cars, and etcetera), and it will show you how big to make them and where to put them in order to maintain proper perspective, all the way out to the horizon. If the ground is irregular, or the objects don't follow a straight line, the principal remains the same, but the vanishing point shifts.

The simple intersecting lines (at the vanishing point) that are used pretty much universally for single point perspective, two point perspective, three point perspective and so on are also geometric formulas.

The particular teacher I am talking about was very much into Abstract Expressionism and didn't believe in using anything like that. What I was having great difficulty with was that she apparently didn't believe any other type of art was valid (or even worth looking at), had somehow acquired a master's degree in art, and didn't even know about things like the very simple geometry involved in vanishing points and single point perspective (let alone any kind of multiple point perspective, gridding shadows and reflections and so on). I didn't know it was even possible to get a masters in art without even knowing the basics.
 
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FallisPhoto said:
I know my art history. I have a BA in fine art, plus a lot of indepentent study credits beyond that. Egyptian art was much the same.
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Sorry, my intention was not to imply that you don't know your art history; rather, the very opposite. The comment was more intended for lurkers and for those who deny the importance of art history; yours was merely a convenient post to hang that on.

Cheers,

R.
 
To me this seems like the equivalent of touch typing for writers. It's certainly useful knowledge, but you can be a perfectly fine writer without it.

Philipp[/quote]

I suppose you can be a good enough artist without any training, but I know of no opera stars who are not formally trained at some point.
I'm sure the same applies for photography, but not necessarily in the same sense that opera requires and orchestra, or a proper photographer requires a complete studio with lights and a digital backed Hasselblad.

I'm a self trained guitarist who has played professionally, but had I had some formal training I would be playing more jazz and less blues and rock.

I have extensive training in painting and photography and was raised in a family who practiced both. I've had many more failures with the benefit of constructive criticism than a self trained Joe.

I can make 'opera' if I wish. But best of all, I can toy with rules and styles and work much faster than someone not formally trained.
I also can think/create multi dimensionally and across mediums as result of the exposure that training gives.

While there are those who wish to claim that they are unspoiled by their ignorance (with a virgin vision?), a world full of Grandma Moses' is just as boring as one full of Salon artists.

Here's painting where the intent of its creation is a pun on perspective; a half way world where the subject is real but its purpose is totally abstract and should be viewed as such.

I could never have created this without training in both photography and painting.
 

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