Photography ‘Education’

This is a chapter from the book A Lesser Photographer.

In deciding which photography publications, podcasts and videos are worth your valuable time, it helps to remember that our obsession is not cameras, it’s photography.

This eliminates roughly 99% of the filler out there.

Here are a few simple rules worth considering when learning about photography:

• Most books could be a blog post or two, and most blog posts could be a sentence or two. Recognize those who don’t respect your time. There’s courage in brevity.
• Know your teacher. Consider who you’re giving your time and attention to and whether you’re learning anything of value. If not, move along. If you don’t find a suitable replacement, you’ll regain precious time and maybe learn a thing or two on your own.
• Always favor individuals over groups or companies. Individuals have more incentive to be honest and less reason to provide the kind of filler content that may be profitable, but provides little real knowledge. That filler comes at the expense of your time, attention, and money.
• Consider the ad-to-content ratio. With more advertisers to please, the amount of honest content shrinks. If everything is great, anything can be sold.

Cameras will always improve. Will you? Accept that the advance of technology will not necessarily make you a better photographer, and most of what passes for photography education becomes irrelevant.