For most of my mentoring career I have tried to put myself into the shoes of beginners trying to learn. I started this blog by simply sharing my own attempts to learn. But most of my blog posts, and now YouTube videos, are small bites of information. They are narrow topics, specific bits of gear, or one single idea to delve into.
Every so often I need to dig deeper and wider at the same time. My new video today is a long chat about photography, without talking about cameras.
I do talk about the tension between learning technical skills and applying your creative direction. There is a dance between the two and I feel so much of photographic tuition focuses on the technical or the creative, and not so much were the two meet. There's one chapter in the video as well called "Why Are My Photos Boring?", which is a little tongue in cheek but I think this is how many people feel about their photos. Especially when starting out.
As beginners we don't always have the language to even ask the right questions. So when experienced photographers talk about "Composition", a beginner simply might not understand why this is a topic they might want to engage with. But they do understand "My Photos Are Boring".
Light is a big feature of this chat of course. Light always matters. I have written countless articles about light, numerous chapters and made a few videos on it as well. Light is the thing that turns a subject into a photo. And this video is all about photography, not cameras!
I have included a framework for discussing exposures, and drive modes. So technically you could say I do discuss cameras. In a general sense at least. And I have a chapter on "iPhones vs Cameras", which you could say tries to emphasise that for most things your choice of camera makes very little difference.
I really am hoping this video will be super useful to beginners. I'm not trying to answer "all the questions", but trying to give beginners a chance to think about different questions. To start asking themselves better questions perhaps. Many of us experienced photographers can fall into the trap of forgetting how much knowledge and wisdom we possess, and get to draw from each and every day. We don't always appreciate how steep the learning curve can be for those starting out fresh.
The journey towards learning new skills is never easy, indeed it shouldn't be easy. Doing the work is how we grow skills, it's how we get better at anything. But I think motivation grows stronger when you have a clear idea of which path you are on, and where it is going to take you. And that's my goal today, to help a few people find the right path for themselves.
– Ewen
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