There Are No Shorcuts - You Have To Work For It
You know, I keep seeing all these ads on the subway and the bus: Become an android app developer in 4 weeks or become a massage therapist in 16 months or a paralegal in 12 months. Are these schools really promising bright futures in these careers if you sign up for their programs and give them you’re hard earned money? Are they creating false hope? Making empty promises? Or is this for real?
Could this be a result of us having become a society of incredibly impatient people ALWAYS looking for instant gratification and wanting everything NOW? To hell with waiting and actually putting in the hard work it takes to get where we want to be in life, I want it ALL NOW!
In massage therapy there is some serious science and anatomical knowledge necessary just as in app developing, there has to be some fairly in depth knowledge of coding. Are they oversimplifying things by putting such short timelines in these courses and their pretty extensive learning? It got me thinking about our industry. Can someone make promises of becoming a photographer in x amount of months?
In the world of photography there certainly is some science involved. The science and knowledge of light, how to use light, how light behaves in certain situations and of course the Inverse Square Law. There is also the exposure triangle, aperture, shutter speed and ISO and how those three things correlate and work together and impact the look and feel of your images. Yes all of this stuff CAN indeed be taught. My big question is, can you teach someone to have an EYE for photography? You can teach proper composition of an image, rule of thirds and the golden triangle but I personally don’t believe you can teach someone to have a good eye, you either have one or you don’t. That eye can be honed and developed but you do indeed need a jumping off point.
That’s just my two cents on it, take it for what it’s worth. I would love to hear your thoughts on the topic, maybe you don’t think it’s that simple or maybe you agree with me.