Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/04/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Fellow LUGers, Donal made some very good points about the under education of the photojournalism schools. From my experiences I learned next to nothing in college that prepared me for life in the working world of daily newspaper work or for that matter professional photography in general. The emphasis at my school was on "fine art" and producing archival works. Not very applicable to real time photography where in the days of B&W shooting you would use dektol straight for 30 secs (on film) and print wet to meet a late deadline. It continues to be a point of contention for me that I wasted all this money on an "education" that served me so little in my career. Everything I use on the job today has been self taught. I learned absolutely no location lighting. Something you have to know to shoot chrome. What are you going to do when you get a corporate client who wants a shot in a factory as big as 2 football fields and you have to light it and match the color of light in the room? This would have been a good exercise, but no we wasted time studying art photography most of which was produced through the use of federal grants. Our teacher even said that color correction did not really work so there was no reason to waste time learning it!!! As far as the schools being able to teach what makes a good or great photographer, I really believe this is something that can not be taught. It is something you either have or don't have. You can be taught the technical details and become a master of those, but to be able to transform a scene of randomness into an image that tells the story is something you either have or don't. The only way you get good at this is to burn up a lot of film and always look at your work and try to figure out where you went wrong and to try to improve upon your mistakes. As has been pointed out already, the camera you are using does not matter it is your ability to "see" that matters. Donal also made the comment that schools should teach more business of photography classes. AMEN to that. I spent 10 years working in newspapers and for wire services before entering the freelance/assignment business end of photography. While the news business trained me, I think better than any other experience could have, to be able to produce high quality work under demanding situations and deadlines. It taught me squat about the business end of photography. I left the news business with photos having been published in every paper in the United States, in most major magazines including TIME, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED ect, but I had no idea of how to create contacts, market myself, how to price jobs, or an understanding of copyright law. I felt like a rank amateur after a few months. Looking back on all the mistakes I made starting out I want to scream! Fortunately over time I have learned a thing or two from my mistakes and now work smarter. This thing we do boils down to one simple fact those who have the drive, talent, and willingness to put in the long hours eventually succeed. Those with out talent can make a marginal living, but will probably wash out eventually. Now all we need to do is get the bean counters to realize that just because you own a camera you are not a photographer, and that there really is a difference in the guy charging a high day rate and the guy charging $60.00 an hour. Harrison McClary hmphoto@delphi.com http://people.delphi.com/hmphoto