Learning photography
It was a busy day and almost went without the post. I was catching up on some projects I want to finish off this month.
At the same time, I started working on a project requiring a bit more thinking through and building arguments, and I simply run out of time for it. Oh, well, maybe next week or the week after that.
Meantime, I simple post about learning photography. I have several ways I keep my skills improving.
I pick up a book from time to time, pure photographic book as often as more technical stuff. I hardly ever buy them, though, having access to great library in college town. I own few reference books, like Lightroom and Photoshop books by Scott Kelby, those I tend to need from time to time.
I subscribe to a couple of magazines- Outdoor Photographer and LensWork currently, but I am thinking of changing.
I am spending hours on the Internet, looking through all the free sources of information. There are countless web pages and blogs. I think I am subscribing right now to 85 blogs, but I am going through my list every one in a while, and see which one are not of interest any more. I am adding new often, so I need to clean up too.
I am subscribing to Kelby Training and I have to admit that I like it more then taking classes at Betterphoto, which I did once as well. I don’t think there is anything wrong with Betterphoto, just both options are based on completely different learning style. Kelby Training is like a lecture, you sit, watch in your free time, one day 5 min, the other whole hour. It better fits my schedule, when even weekends can be crazy. Betterphoto is formal class, taken from day to day, with assignments which need to be submitted. I had hard time finding time and subjects on short notice. Not good creativity? Maybe, but it was a chore. Of course, I am not getting any feedback at Kelby Training, so it is not serving one purpose, but is far less stressful. And if I don’t like the teacher, well, I go to watch another class. I really didn’t feel I got much out of my interaction with instructor at Betterphoto, we probably were not a good match, and that is something probably hard to figure out before signing.
One thing I haven’t tried yet is a workshop. It really is a lot of interaction and feedback, so I am eager. Maybe for summer vacation?
Is there any other way I forgot to mention?
UPDATE: watching the third webinar on http://creativelive.com/ I realized that I forgot to mention those. They are available for free, unlike on KelbyTraining you can ask questions through chat or Twitter, but they are not formal classes, so I think they might constitute its own category. David Ziser did some webinars as well, I don’t know if they all were paid, but some you could watch later for free.