Forget About Spending Your Money on a Photo Workshop! Part 2

Besides laziness, there is an intellectual intimidation factor involved why one would want to attend a photo workshop. You may feel a sense of inferiority that you could never produce a quality photograph without attending a workshop. There is no reason to even think this and you cannot even reveal your potential unless you drive yourself to photograph, photograph, research and photograph and photograph.

Don't be discouraged if you see outstanding photographs which really appeal to you. Don't feel you could never produced that quality of photography without being taught by that artist. That creates artist idolatry which confines you to an inferior artistic role and destroys your opportunity for artistic independence and confidence. First ask yourself why your own work does not prompt the same extreme satisfaction as viewing this other work from that artist. Is it the color, the lighting, the composition, the time of day, certain editing techniques? If you look hard and critically you will create a step by step plan in your mind to what to research and what to implement in your own photography. Photograph with that plan in mind and study the results. Composition wise am I not noticing what is closest to me? Do I need to spend more time looking at what I want to photograph? Composing in live view is perfect for this and it will present a larger and more imposing view then a viewfinder. Every aspect of photography has to be approached like this and your strength as an artist will grow. What you do not what to do is copy another artist's vision and workshops can certainly create that tendency and destroy your chance of creating your own personal vision. Influences are not to be denied but incorporated in your own work to refine what you want. If your work is similar to your influence, so be it as long as you know that this is your own vision of your work and not a blatant copy.

You are your own judge and jury. You should never have to feel the need for approval, which is always nice to hear. Approval, though, is a drug that can drag you into artistic conformity and a betrayal of your own principles in so many areas besides photography. You know you are growing as an artist if you can respond to the usual vitriolic condescending criticism leveled these days by responding with the response of "Yeah? So What" or my cruder response of "Who in the fuck cares what you think!!!" Constructive criticism should always start with questions. What did you want to achieve with this vision, your photograph? Why did you print the shadows this dark? Why choose this time of day for this photograph? If you do not have a satisfactory answer then you know you have more work to do to fine tune your vision. The questions indicate that the critic wants to understand your vision. He may not agree with it but he is interested in knowing what the reasons are behind your vision. By the way, certain types of approval can be very dismissive and condescending by just saying your photographs look very nice without anything specific about your images. That is artistic arrogance and another way of telling you your work is not worth my time. Fuck 'em and move on emotionally and intellectually.