Around this time of year, students who are thinking about going into photography will contact me and ask my advice about various aspects of the business and what the best route to take is.
This is weird to me, since there are way better photographers to ask than me, but be that as it may, I do my best to oblige...
The first and best advice I give is actually advice that I can’t truthfully claim as my own. It was given to me awhile back by @chadholder:
“Go to a school where you can get a good understanding of the basics and the relationship that exists between your eye and the camera. Then, go and assist really great photographers.”
That is about as solid as advice gets. I didn’t do a ton of the assisting (which could be why I am not as good as Chad Holder), but I am friends and associate with a lot of really good photographers who have excelled in very different areas of photography, and it really does up your game.
Also, to expand on that above quote, I always like to give the advice to find a program that teaches black and white film. In my opinion, dark room experience is vital to a solid understanding and approach to photography and post processing.
Film may seem like a waste of time, because the chances of you actually using it in your professional career get slimmer and slimmer every year. However, the limited number of exposures, and the unforgiving nature of the darkroom (when compared to digital), make you take the shoot more seriously.
After just a few days where you spend hours in the dark room, only to come out with images that are "meh" at best, you really start to pay a lot more attention to what you are doing at the shoot (making sure you have a good image to begin with), and you will learn to take your time to really get that post processing stuff down. When you have a good understanding of the basics and the "rules", then you will find that you know when and how to to break the rules to create unique, dynamic images.
You can learn a lot on Youtube, Youtube is great. However, you can also get really distracted and get ahead of yourself. Don't make the juvenile mistake of wanting to go from just realizing you are interested in photography to running the whole show in one leap. Foundation first, then build the really fun stuff, step by step. You can probably learn how to do a complex post processing technique or effect by watching a video on youtube, but if you don't know how or why those steps work, you won't be able to really make it your own. Plus, if something goes wrong, you won't know why, or how to fix it.
Learning the right way is always the best. The better I get at photography, the more I seem to go back to the basics. All of the options and tools that are available in Photoshop are great, and can make things go a lot quicker. But it's a false notion to think that a person needs the latest and greatest shortcuts and tools to make a quality image. The images below have been processed using only techniques that I know how to do in a dark room (with the exception of a little additional sharpening on a couple, because my kids can't sit still).
Are they the best images in the world? No, but I know that nowadays, a lot of people think that some of the effects you see in these images are the result of some fancy photoshop action or filter. I did it to prove a point. Just a couple of photogenic kids, a flash, a white pop-up backdrop, dodging & burning, and a pair of digital scissors here!
