You should go to photo school if you want structured learning. Groundwork from the fundamentals to the bigger concepts. It will move too slowly for many of you, too fast for others. There are lots of great programs, worldwide.
If you don’t do better with structured learning and you are highly motivated and prefer real world experience, don’t go. Instead, teach yourself, take workshops, get mentors, read books, build your support network, work for other people. And most importantly take a helluva lot of photographs. Dig the long ditch that it takes to learn to make a living with photographs.
If this is too simple a post for you, then go to photo school.
Right now, the commercial arts are completely driven by popular culture. This is the main reason that school has not necessarily been required for commercial artists working in the post-world war 2 era. Pop culture is entirely about living in the moment and instant gratification (Do as thou wilt) It rejects the past and invests nothing in the future. This is why each pop culture trend has a lifespan of only 2-4 years. The people that are best at creating pop culture for advertising usually share a similar attitude towards the craft of photography. Why spend years studying the masters when they can “just do it” now? Why worry about the future when the moment is all that counts anyway? If everything they are doing today is only going to be replaced by something new tomorrow, then why bother mastering anything today? Self-taught photographers are really good at not-mastering anything and they are also really good at “just doing it” and living in the moment. They don’t have the patience to take a structured approach towards craftsmanship and want to start making something now. They don’t want to learn about a bunch of old dead white guys and this is why school bores them. School stands completely at odds with pop culture and doesn’t create good pop artists. Academic institutions won’t be considered valuable as long as pop culture exists. However, if something comes along to destroy pop culture, then school will be important again. Basically, the folks that don’t want to go to school can do fine as long as they’re living in an era dominated by popular culture. But, if something comes along to change that then they’re screwed.
I like that blog.
I take pictures for some years now and had the feeling of getting to a dead end.
Only recently did I find Chase Jarvis YouTube videos and creativeLive.
Those online classes gave me a new boost. And I hope I’ll learn at lot soon
to actually start earning a living from making pictures. Creativity is just a big part of me
The problem with photo school as well as many other art programs, your entire grade is based upon the subjective opinion of a handfull of instructors. I would say better to get a business degree and assist with a photographer who’s style you admire.
This question always troubles me because I know a lot of great, creative people who do study visual arts, including photography and film making. I never want to speak negatively about such aspirations. On the other hand, I know just as many who have studied it and it didn’t work out for them. They’d put all their eggs into studying photography for example, they got the degree but didn’t have the creative drive to turn it into anything after that. The pressure to learn formally and then professionalise what they once held as a creative outlet was self defeating in the end.
Creativity can’t really be taught, it should instead develop naturally. If one wants to do photography commercially, then focus on learning those skills that will aid the art… business, accounting, business law and marketing. Not only will they help with turning a passion into a career, but they provide a a back up career, something to take the pressure off being a successful artist straight away.
It totally depends on what your after. If you want to do your own stuff then having a school degree not that important.