Thoughts on Photography Workshops

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

It will never teach you to take compelling pictures however, but that, unfortunately, is why many attend, because they believe that rubbing elbows with X for a few days will allow tgem to take photos like X.

I think a lot of them also think that they'll be 'discovered' by the famous person and that doors to galleries and jobs will open for them if they just 'invest' the money in paying the famous photographer to allow them in his/her presence. I doubt that anyone ever gets such a benefit from attending a workshop. The guys teaching them see workshop participants as rich people they can get money from rather than professional colleagues.

 

[Michiel Fokkema]

Well, I can' t speak for others but the workshops I give are value for money. But I teach technique to people who are too lazy to study the manual. I'll tell them in a day how their camera works or their flash. Do some practices with them and tell them to go out to shoot and practice till they know what they do. I also tell them their first 10.000 photo's will be their worst.
Can' t see what is wrong with that.

Cheers,

Michiel Fokkema

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Well, I can' t speak for others but the workshops I give are value for money. But I teach technique to people who are too lazy to study the manual. I'll tell them in a day how their camera works or their flash. Do some practices with them and tell them to go out to shoot and practice till they know what they do. I also tell them their first 10.000 photo's will be their worst.
Can' t see what is wrong with that.

Cheers,

Michiel Fokkema

Nothing wrong with that, I do the same with my students (except I teach people one on one, not in a workshop). What we're discussing are the high-dollar workshops given by world-famous photographers.

 

[justsayda]

A very interesting thread on a topic I've often reflected on.

It seems that, in England at least, it is the large format users who go for workshops and, judging by their work, end up becoming clones of whoever's workshop they went on.

The links on their websites are to other photographers they met on the workshop whose photographs are all indistinguishable from each other. (Note that you only find them linked to each other's websites: usually, no-one else has heard of them.)

Although technically execellent, there's usually nothing exactly inspirational about their work, which, it appears, has to screw the last ounce of magenta out of Velvia, either three hours after the sunrise or before sunset. (It seems that Velvia in sheet form won't work at any other time of day..............)

They then, with a year or two's experience themselves, they start running their own workshops turning out another generation of clones.

Also:

1) How many great photographers (and I mean really great) learnt their stuff from workshops?

2) How do you teach creativity?