The Digital Insider

Going to photography school with passion, enthusiasm and a longing for photographic knowledge can sometimes make the most open-minded student hang on every word a professor utters in his/her lectures. This can create a nightmare for by-the-book photo students that go out in the field thinking that the way they were taught was the best, most efficient and in some cases the only way to do something. Having worked as an assistant while completing the last semester of the photography program at Santa Monica College I quickly learned that there are several ways to skin a cat…if you take this literally, well, I really don’t like cats.

Now, whatever you learn in photography school it’s just a primer. First, there are several photographers out there that have no formal training.  Second, 99% of the potential clients out there could care less. And lastly, the bottom line is can you do the job.  No one cares if you went to Pasadena Art Center, Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara or Santa Monica Community College. Hell, technically speaking, they all give you the same education. In seven years, I have only encountered one situation where an editor actually said to me that she preferred people from a certain school. I wasn’t from that school but was hired and paid my day rate just the same. I delivered the goods and that’s all that mattered.

You are probably wondering what the hell this all has to do with the above title. Well, for the first few years out of photography school my bread and butter income was assisting two architectural photographers. One guy had several cameras, a studio full of strobe and hot lights and every gadget imaginable not to mention that he was on eBay every single day looking for more gadgets. There were glass filters with specific holders, center filters for every lens, a shutter release with a wind up timer on it; you name it he had it. And it wasn’t out of character to use 12 or more lights on one shot as a matter of fact it was common.

The other guy was a total minimalist. We would go out with a field camera, a basic Lowell light-kit (1 - 750 watt and 3 - 1000 watt lights) and one HMI. He even used his son’s old white bed sheet as bounce and he would put filters on the camera lens with blue tack and cheap plastic Lee filters.

The bottom line is that they are two of the top five and most sought after architectural photographers in southern California.

I learned a lot from working with each guy. Hence, when I was working on my own as a still photographer or doing work on low-budget independent films as a cinematographer, I employed everything I learned from both guys. If there was a budget for some gadgets I knew the most effective way to use them and if there was no budget, which was generally the case, I knew how to do the best with what I had.

So, work with anyone and everyone you can, absorb as much information as you can then go forth and do what you do.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 8:41 pm and is filed under Photo Tips, digital photography, photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.