What helped you grow the most?

What helped you grow the most?

  • Class (taking or teaching)

    Votes: 68 13.9%

  • Having a mentor

    Votes: 51 10.4%

  • Belonging to a photography club

    Votes: 17 3.5%

  • Reading books/magazines

    Votes: 123 25.1%

  • The internet/Participating in a forum (RFF)

    Votes: 133 27.1%

  • Working on a project

    Votes: 77 15.7%

  • Trial & Error (& reflection)

    Votes: 286 58.4%

  • Viewing artwork

    Votes: 152 31.0%

  • Other

    Votes: 54 11.0%
  • Total voters
    490
For me, travel is always a HUGE help in progressing forwards.
Beyond that, working on a series has given me considerably more consistency and forward thinking, but that only really helps with the series I'm working on.
Books and magazines (very few magazines, might I add) are a great bit of help too. Sometimes it's nice to have something take your mind off what you're doing while still being related.

Having said that, I'd desperately love to have a mentor. Taking a class would be good too but I think I'm at the point where the class would have to be somewhat related to where I am, so a mentor would be so much better.
 
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TheHub said:
Switching to film and experimenting with different equipment: TLRs, folders and rangefinders.
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This, + deleting shots on digital straight on cam and not coming back home with a full CF ...

( And gaspari myofusion,superpump250 and lots of milk and sleep ... 😀 )
 
Shooting film!

Started with a d40X. After a few years of use, I met a photographer who questioned me as to whether or not I "knew my stops". He proceeded to pull out a hand drawn table containing various shutter speeds, apertures, and iso settings, and tried to explain how they were all related. It seemed so complicated, and I was totally lost.

I didn't have any friends that could have explained this stuff to me before, and eventually brushed off his chart as something only really serious photographers would ever need to know. After all, why bother with details when you can get good pictures by shooting in P? Or by lining up that little dot on the meter in M?

Film changed everything for me!
 
What was a great help for me was taking class with photographer who help me in learning to see in a different way, like K.Carter or M.Botman. At least I know now what kind of photography I want to do. Being member of a fotoclub was helpful in the beginning not so much today. Visiting photo (and art) exhibitions it improve the capacitiy to develop ideas and, again, to see in a different way.
robert
PS and trying, trying, throwing away the bad ones, trying again....🙂
 
Olsen said:
Do really less than 20% of participants hear have some kind of photographic education? How many here have a formal education in photography? 10%?
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actually, i'm not surprised. i have none, but have posted on RFF to get to know about some workshop opportunities for "class learning."
 
Probably my ability to compose hasn't improved much since the p&s days. Still focused too much on the details with this fancy camera stuff...

I think my editing and post skills have improved my photography. A nicely exposed, souped, scanned and processed Leica shot beats out anything from my p&s days.
 
No. 1 for me is "Class". Doing a master's degree in photography did two things: it taught me a huge amount about all aspects of photography* and allowed me to talk about my images with photographers who get where I come from. Some of us graduates meet regularly as a collective so we can continue to give and get feedback, and share skills and equipment.

No. 2 is "Photography club". The people there were open and inviting, and where I learnt my craft. The 3 years at the club taught me the skills that got me accepted on the MA course.

No. 3 is everything else - books, looking at paintings and other photographs, the internet, trial and error, etc.

(* Except craft and technique. Not sure if it's the same in other countries but on a British MA degree they teach you nothing about equipment and technique, as you're expected to already be an expert "technical" photographer. If your photos or prints are technically flawed, you'll fail!)
 
Time. In this I experiencing love, hate, death, happiness, sadness, travel, friendship, having different kinds of jobs to support myself, getting married, the birth of my son, living life, and working towards my goals, which are clearer now than ever before.
 
Don't know if I've posted before, but growth for me was photographing (as a freelance photo-journalist) the 1968 police riots at San Francisco State College, working along seasoned pro's from Black Star, Reuters, and other media folks. I really learned a lot about shooting in a very unstable and constantly changing situation. Also photographing anti-Vietnam demonstrations, laying on the tarmac and shooting up at the marchers with my beat-up Pentax Spotmatic.
 
On the cusp of becoming a teenager in 1974 my school, in the UK, introduced me to National Geographic. I'd always been interested in geography and dreamed of travelling to many of the places I'd heard of but no chance as, despite not being in poverty, there was never enough money to indulge in such things. However, NatGeo was a great outlet and the amazing photographs inspired me to learn how to use the camera I received for my 13th birthday.

Trial and error is probably the single, largest influence on most people's photography as I doubt anyone gets it right first time. However, what got me going and kept me going was NatGeo and books of photographs by the likes of Ansel Adams, Don McCullin, David Bailey and anythin else I could get my hands on from our library in the mid-1970s onwards.
 
Having a scientist's brain, I studied and continue to dissect how interesting photos were invented - the mechanical basis. The second thing I do after viewing a photo is try to determine how I think it was produced.

Acquiring different format equipment and lenses with desired characteristics led to sorting out which best expressed the feeling I wanted to capture - the artistic expressions.

Bottom line, I applied "the scientific method" of forming theories of what caused a given outcome, then designed block experiments with controlled variables to test those theories. The conclusions drawn moved me to new experiments, often to questions occurring during conduction of these tests.

Texsport
 
I made myself influenced by looking at others work . How they did it and what equipments they preferred and used . The advantages and so fourth. It was too involvement of lot of trial and error . The books and the exhibitions and showing of others had the best way for me to become a photographer today. Yes I am a photographer.
 
Calzone said:
For me it was three things:two college courses in photography; having a B&W darkroom; and shooting, developing and printing on a manic scale.

Use to spend whole weekends printing where I went through new box of 100 8X10 in a night.

Recently developed 12 rolls of film on a Sunday.

Calzone
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Wow. This is an old thread. Today I would say getting a Leica Monochrom. Because I consider and treat digital as a totally seperate mediums (I still shoot film and don't scan), it is like learning photography all over again.

Being an old school B&W film guy who went to art school in the 70's and shot for decades, I quickly learned that basic things like focus and exposure become much more critical in digital, and less than perfect really isn't any good with digital. Although there are many analagies, digital is different enough to put me on a new learning curve making photography fresh and new again.

Now its been a bit more than 2 years shooting a Monochrom. In reguard to exposure more unforgiving than any color digital camera as far as overexposure, but when you nail exposure with good composition and technic easily medium format quality.

Also a funny thing is that if you print and learn to print well, inevidably and hopefully you end up making better negatives and files.

Cal
 
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