Learn – So you know everything?
Back in the archives of the 4togs I wrote about the gear obsessions that people seem to have with the latest kit. So what did I do when I got a bit of spare cash… No, I didn’t go and spend it on the next piece of trick kit, instead I signed up for a Seminar. Not just any seminar though, as I’m building a business it had to be close to the area of photography that I was working towards and relevant for my learning requirements.
So what seminar did I go for? It was the three day workshop with David A Williams and his ‘Almost Alone’ sessions. Why this course you may ask, well I knew I needed to work on posing groups and couples for portrait sessions and it would be relevant to wedding photography. It also gave me the chance to meet one of the most wonderful and respected photographers. All I can say is that I was not disappointed with my investment in any way, being a hands on course, with posing sessions as well as talks about several areas of posing groups, couples and individuals, it went further and demonstrated lighting (both available and flash), telling the story of wedding days and even into album design. All this was offered up by the most energetic and caring person I have had the pleasure to meet, David Williams, he also has a wicked sense of humour. One of the highlights was the one on one critique session, it was a great experience and not one negative in there, all the feedback was positively re-inforced to encourage learning and self improvement.
So have I improved following on from the course? I know I have, but I’ve not stopped yet… every day is a new chance to learn and improve, one of the key things that I took away with me, was that now matter what skill level you are at, you can always learn something new and improve yourself. All this without buying any new kit!
So go on, treat yourself to a workshop, course or seminar.
Good one Matt. Do you now want to duplicate your kit for half the cost
Seriously, the difficulty with any seminars and training courses are that you never know what you’re getting until you’ve paid or “lost” your money. I would say you need to find recommended courses etc., at least then you can beat someone up if it’s rubbish 
Workshop Evangelism!!
Nice one
One thing I’ve been doing is some “coaching”, kinda teaching, but on a 1-2-1 basis, so you tend to watch how they work and suggest things…
anyway – the point is that it’s pretty rewarding being the teacher too. You never realise just how much you know about something till you talk to someone who knows nothing…
Gotta agree with Ade…
I’ve never done any actually training of people, but informal skill-sharing sessions can be as useful for the person doing the teaching as the people doing the learning. Sometimes you don’t realise how much you know about a subject until you attempt to show it to someone else!
Or how much you don’t know!
Aye, and then you get posts about off camera flash cords Mr Scholey ;o)
That’s exactly what I was talking about