Hey! We're all back, let's dive right in. I've spent August trying to figure out why some people have long and happy careers as photographers (both amateurs and professionals) while others have trouble getting off the ground or burn out and walk away from what should be an almost infinite source of fun and self-expression. There's been a lot of news and gnashing of teeth over the last month about the closing of Brooks Institute and other "for profit" photography schools and it begs a metaphorical question: How long can we keep listening to Beatles tunes in elevators as background music? Everything changes. Everything moves on.
Looking at Brooks, historically, shows me that what Brooks did really well was to unlock the secrets of lighting and exposure, and show students how to focus this knowledge, along with the cumbersome photographic tools of the day, to make good quality photographs. During most of the school's long tenure these were necessary secrets to unravel and acquire. There was much more than nuts and bolts configurations in their teaching; more than just concepts of lighting, exposure and how to pose a model. My friends who attended Brooks in the 1970s really do understand (with great competence) the details of view camera movements and how these movements impact final images. The students absorbed helpful technical knowledge that was oh so relevant in the heady days of film photography--- stuff like reciprocity failure and exposure corrections required for close up work and macro imaging. They could calculate "bellows factors." They learned how to develop (in actual chemicals) films in all sizes, from 35mm to 8x10 inch sheets. They even learned the finer points of selenium toning double weight, fiber papers.
And guess what? We taught the same basic curriculum at the University of Texas at Austin, in the college of Fine Arts. These technical classes were described in the (printed) course catalog as "Commercial Photographic Illustration." Very few of the now arcane film techniques have relevance for photographers working today.
Digital imaging has mostly obviated the need to learn anything but
Digital imaging has mostly obviated the need to learn anything but
