Dont understand this

Adrianr said:
Learn photography on here, you'll learn (eventually) how to take a sharp properly exposed photo conforming to the rule of thirds. Go study it somewhere like LCC, you may just learn why you take photos, and how they can convey incredibly complex subject matter or concepts..

Honestly, photography courses like that aren't there to teach you how to take photos. They're there to teach you to *think* (People can do this without University education, but it's nowhere near as easy for most!). They're not interested in training up 40 technicaly perfect robots. They want to create 40 free thinking original creatives (They won't succeed of course, but that's not for lack of trying). How many times you'll hear "I'm not going to Uni to be taught how to use a camera, I can use a camera fine". I would challenge anyone here to produce 3 years of work completely self initiated, then produce 3 years of work with dedicated structure, 39 peers to review, discuss and critique your work, see which is better.

There is a lot of 'wishy washy arty ****', especially somewhere like LCC (Where, like all London arts uni's they believe they're gods gift to the arts world), but the purpose extends far beyond one set of pictures for their final project. Remember you're looking at the final photos from the MA Photography course, it's fine art by nature. I've seen all the masters work that's came out of LCF on their fashion photography course in the past 4 or so years and most of it can happily go straight into almost any industry application of your choosing. But much more, the photographers themselves are mentally in a position to produce work like that damn near on demand. Is that not worth £4075? Or would you rather spend it on a 5DMKII and some lenses, and produce nothing but unoriginal ill-thought out ****?

I don't know why I'm explaining this on here as it will only get shot down with the usual replies, but there really is a LOT more to it than it being sharp and properly exposed.
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To be honest IMO your talking about things that can't be taught, and if it has to be taught then the chances are that kind of photography isn't for them anyway.
 
Say you take a photo of a politician and hes male, the lecturers will stand in class and say that theres no sense of power or anything within the image, that it could just be a normal guy in a suit. But as soon as the exact situation happens with a female in the frame, suddenly the female subject the next prime minister, theres all this "power" and "feminism" and "superiority" going on.
 
Ejizz said:
To be honest IMO your talking about things that can't be taught, and if it has to be taught then the chances are that kind of photography isn't for them anyway.
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I strongly disagree, there's plenty of compositional and artistic elements which can easily be taught. How energy flows in photograph and how peoples eyes take in a scene are both vastly helpful to know. Without knowing things like that you might feel a picture works without knowing why and if you don't know why it doesn't matter how good it is, you're not improving.

My photography was improved far more by 30 minutes critique from an artist than any amount of learning how to get things in focus and correctly exposed. The rule of thirds is a starting point yet far too many people treat it as the only compositional rule ever to exist.
 
twoblacklines said:
I am glad you have explained it. Currently in my module (we only have one module of photography out of 6 per year) we take pictures and bring them back for critique, but only a few people critique them, the rest just sit there bored, and cant engage.
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I generally post all the images I consider keepers on another forum's critique section (photography on the net), they tend to be pretty honest and brutal with the odd idiot thrown in for good measure.
I'v found it helps improve my photography no end, as the critique feels like a good kicking when your first start out.
Eventually as you improve the beatings become less severe, and eventually the tide shifts from mostly negative critique to mostly positive critique and you can generally gauge your progress by the comments you get.
 
bigredshark said:
I strongly disagree, there's plenty of compositional and artistic elements which can easily be taught. How energy flows in photograph and how peoples eyes take in a scene are both vastly helpful to know. Without knowing things like that you might feel a picture works without knowing why and if you don't know why it doesn't matter how good it is, you're not improving.
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Again you don't need collage to learn the above, and it still doesn't teach you how to be truly creative, it doesn't teach you 'talent', it just teaches the rule of thirds and then some.

Ultimately it's like trying to teach someone to be an inventor.


bigredshark said:
My photography was improved far more by 30 minutes critique from an artist than any amount of learning how to get things in focus and correctly exposed. The rule of thirds is a starting point yet far too many people treat it as the only compositional rule ever to exist.
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At the end of the day it's still learning rules. What can't be taught is the ability to break rules and make it work or to create new ones...
 
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A similar thread to this was about earlier in the year, so I'll just cheat and paste my thought on the matter from that thread;

tbs said:
I have never seen a photo and it being classified as Fine Art, but only the people trying to justify it as being fine art needs to reassess the subject matter being displayed in the photo.
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I have seen plenty of fine art photography, and work with it everyday as I am a Photography & Print technician in a university with a fine art photography degree. The idea of 'fine art' is so subjective that where you draw the boundaries for the subject depends on the people judging it. You say; "only the people trying to justify it as being fine art needs to reassess the subject matter being displayed in the photo", but the lecturers, readers & heads of department in our university obviously disagree and think otherwise.

Are you right? Are they right? Any both or neither of you right? Well, as art in general, but especially fine & contemporary art are so subjective that I believe only the artist themselves can categorize or judge their work. This is one of the reasons I find Art as a subject often very pretentious, as it either involves people trying to analyze others work and extract meanings, thought processes & conceptual ideas, when infact the only person who truly knows the idea behind the image is the artist themselves. Or it involves the artist trying to push a concept or emotion their work, but these often by nature rely so much on an individuals experiences and personal associations that what the artist intended is not what the viewer sees or feels when looking at the work.

This is why I think art should be more of an inward looking process. Listen to yourself and your ideas. Ignore others opinions, and if you like your work then great. If others don't agree then tough as it's not their work. If they do agree, then that's great, but don't try and push the conceptual and emotive ideas of the image, as they are unlikely to share the same associations as the viewer. Let the end result speak for itself.
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To expand on the above; As others have said, Photography courses (certainly fine art BA and MAs) tend to focus less on the technical aspects of photography, and more on abstract concepts and the methodology of reaching the end product. Now I am now saying these courses are a waste of time, as no doubt a lot can be learnt from approaching ideas in a very analytical way and experimenting with increasingly complex concepts. However in order to ultimately drive your own art forward, only so much can be gained from peers. The rest has to come from within and be driven by your own curiosity and a will to keep pushing yourself creatively.

Edit; Completely off topic, but what do you work as Adrianr? I'm guessing something in the photography/print field?
 
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