The other day, several of us who are interested in photography, got together and had a beer over lunch (sorry, no photo of the beer).   The lunchtime conversation was interesting in that we spent most of it reflecting on what worked for each of us and what did not work.  Below is a quick summary of the conclusions we had and the common shared philosophy around teaching and learning photography.

• There are good workshops, and not so good workshops
  • Not so good have things like:
    • ‘Here is what is wrong with that photo’ followed by a long devastating list
    • ‘Oh, there are no photos or anything to take a photo of here’
    • Where the workshop people are more interested in taking their own photos than helping you with yours.
  • Unfortunately it is kind of hard to figure this out without having been on one of these types of workshops….
  • Good workshops
    • Instructors are there to help you
    • Interactive question & answer (not pontificated at)
    • Instructors give each person something to work on for their own improvement based on where they are at.
• That the learning process takes practice and gentle feedback
• That we can learn to give ourselves feedback with practice.

In one workshop that was led, one of the participants was complaining that the sun was in the wrong position and that it was the workshops fault…

Part of what any workshop should teach is how to work with what is there, not what you wish were there.    The joke was about a guy who always won whatever bet he make.  Life became uninteresting…. Part of what makes photography what it is, is the learning of how to work with what we have.

There was one workshop that we bumped into at Bodie,

Funniest places to meet people. Learning Photography can occur anywhere

one of the participants of that workshop had a question that the workshop instructor couldn’t answer.   We looked up the answer out of curiosity, and then ran into the same workshop group at dinner (there are only a limited number of places to eat).  We sat around and discussed the answer with that whole workshop, even though it was not ours.  The goal is about sharing, not hoarding.