General Forums >> Photography Bistro >> School or no school
School or no school
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Posted 3 months ago Do you think you should go to school to photographer? With every thing going up school looks like it not going to happen for a lot of people. What do you think? |
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| Posted 3 months ago Yes GO TO SCHOOL! It makes understanding everything so much easier to understand. Plus there are standards out there for priceing and the best place to learn that is in a college environment, PLUS you can make AWESOME contacts if you go to a school.. Two schools i recomend are, The Art Institute (i went to the one in Fort Lauderdale Fl. they are all over the US) And then Brooks Institute in California. Good luck!
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| Posted 2 months ago Not only did I gain the technical knowledge, but I learned so much from the viewpoints of others in school. Yes, go to school. |
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| Posted 2 months ago I'm going to play Devil's Advocate and say don't go to school for photography. Instead, I'll say go for Business or Visual Marketing/Advertisement or possibly Accounting. Something that requires a degree. You can learn everything you want at your own pace online and on forums. With that being said you can spend most of your time mastering the business degree while working photography on the side. Research has calculated an average professional photographer earns about $25k a year. If you were to have knowledge that deals with money you can easily utilize and increase your earnings. And if you're working with Accounting, you don't even need to hire an accountant to manage your taxes and funds, thus all of the profit goes to you. And if you somehow fail at photography you have a healthy business degree to fall back on. No probs! |
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| Posted 2 months ago I think regardless of what you can/can't accomplish without a degree, school is critically important. True you can make due without, but the benefits are well worth the effort. It focuses your efforts, causes you to do things that you normally may not (whereby expanding your versatility), it exposes you to face-to-face feedback from both professionals and other students (which is TOTALLY different than the feedback you get on a message board), there's just no better way to learn than having a professional spend time with you and actually show you. It makes the learning process much faster and much less frustrating. Also, it teaches you aspects of the non "camera-in-hand" parts of a career as an artist. Things like marketing, financial planning, etc. that are absolutely critical if you hope to succeed in operating a business or even just earning a living. Sure, you could learn these things on your own, by trial and error, or maybe asking someone (which only happens after you realize there''s a problem in the first place)... but most of these things are better learned about in advance. Experience is the best teacher, but the more solid your foundation is -- the better your experiences will be. |
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| Posted 2 months ago Although I am primarily a painter- printmaker, we were required to take a year of photography in my college program (back in the darkroom age). I'm glad I did. It gave me insights that would have taken longer for me to pick up on my own. I agree with what Joseph just said, and it can apply to other mediums as well. |