Let’s go back a few steps and imagine these scenarios… You decide you want to learn how to play the guitar, or the keyboards – so what do you do? You go out and buy an instrument, and then you search online for a guitar or piano teacher. Or maybe you want to learn to play tennis, so you invest in a racquet and you find a tennis coach.
The common theme here is that these educators are charging for their services, as you would expect them to – based on their years of training, knowledge and experience. And the same goes for driving instructors, or language tutors, and so on.
But what about photography? It’s a bit different isn’t it? I see people online every day in various groups and forums asking for advice on how to use their camera, or how to ‘learn the exposure triangle’ – or maybe asking why their shots are blurry, or too dark, or out of focus.
And the response? Look on YouTube . . . Download these crib cards . . . Follow this Instagram account – or my absolute favourite – ‘Just keep playing with your camera and it will all fall into place’. If only that were true!
What is it about photography as a hobby that makes people feel they shouldn’t need to pay anyone to teach them how to do it? They have paid for their equipment in the same way as they would buy a tennis racquet or a guitar, but then they expect to be able to learn how to use it properly without any formal training.
Yet so many of the people I end up teaching have tried to do this previously and just become thoroughly frustrated – to the extent that they have considered abandoning their cameras altogether and going back to just using their phones. They don’t realise what’s possible with a camera if they just had the right 1-2-1 tuition – so they can learn at their own pace, gain hands-on help with understanding how their specific camera actually works, and ask questions that are relevant to their level of knowledge.
How do we change this then, so that beginners really understand the benefits of paying for photography lessons, as well as the equipment that goes with them? I think the change needs to come from those well-meaning ‘advisors’ online, whose suggestions imply that photography is so easy to learn that you don’t need to invest in any kind of personalised tuition.
In my opinion this is just doing new photographers a total disservice, making them feel that the fault is somehow theirs when they struggle to make sense of it all – which is of course not true at all. And that really doesn’t help anyone does it?
The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Amateur Photographer magazine or Kelsey Media Limited. If you have an opinion you’d like to share on this topic, or any other photography related subject, email: ap.ed@kelsey.co.uk
