2010-12-25

Part 2 of 3: Blog as Teaching Tool

I make photographic mistakes. Lots of them to be honest. Wrong exposure, wrong focus, wrong depth of field, and my personal favorite, wrong ISO. Just the other day I quickly realized that I showed up at an event with the wrong camera. Good grief, I didn’t think I’d ever do that. The number of photographic decisions you’ve got to make between seeing the “moment” and centering the framed print on your wall is a little staggering. It’s easy to miss one or two important decisions along the way. I personally think one of the better ways to keep on top of these decisions is to become a teacher of photography.

It’s one thing to be out in the field shooting. You can be privately cocky about the decisions you’re making. Later when you see the results, you can tweak those decisions that were actually crummy. (Eventually you become less cocky.) But when you’re surrounded by a student hungry to be a better photographer, you really ought to be right.

If you publish your images and invite others to view them, occasionally you get asked to give a free presentation. Sometimes it’s a travelogue of a place you’ve been, sometimes it’s just “pretty picture night,” and sometimes, they want a little photography instruction. I always accept these invitations when they arrive.


In September, I created and presented “The 3 Pillars of Photography” for a men’s support/social group. I was in front of about 25 guys, with a projector, laptop, and camera all connected together. It was literally the first time I had ever tried tethered photography, where you shoot a photo, which is then automatically transferred to the laptop, which is then immediately displayed on the big screen. This is a fantastic way to teach; you set things up, you shoot, you review. If you can show immediate examples of the inverse square law, or varying depths of field, or diffraction, or interval shooting, your students will remember these things much better than if you just talked.

I liked that the opportunity pushed me to try something new. Tethered shooting will come in handy later if clients are on hand and want immediate feedback. A new tool in the toolbox.

And who knows, maybe there’s money in teaching. Ever browse photography books at Amazon? There may be as many books as there are cameras!

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