MarcAnthony wrote: Genesis is designed to inspire so you can follow your own path.
And you spent over $1000 for that? If you want inspiration go to the beach and watch a sunset or go to a museum and look at some paintings. That costs nothing. Look, I know I can be a little nasty here and I am not saying the photographers who hold these aren\'t talented. They are and so am I. My point is simply there is nothing to be learned by spending thousands of dollars that can\'t be learned for free by doing your own studying and asking questions. I don\'t have all the answers. Nobody does. But why spend hard earned money to hear somebody with less experience talk about how they do things? The beauty of what we do is that we are artists and we are all unique in our own way. Fine tuning your craft can\'t be taught in a weekend seminar let alone some two hour live instruction. It takes years. I\'ve been at this for over 15 years and I am constantly bettering myself. I\'d rather spend a couple grand on more gear.
Marc,
I\'ve attended two workshops so far: Genesis 1 and Todd Reichmann\'s Sexy Business 1 (apparently I have a thing for getting in on the ground floor).
Before I say anything else let me point out that I ENJOY learning about something i\'m passionate about. If I had the choice between:
1. Spending a week on a caribbean island
2. Taking a cruise around the Atlantic
3. Sitting through 3 days of intense photography, hanging out with other photographers etc.
And they all cost the same, I would choose 3.
It doesn\'t hurt that I lived and traveled around Italy, traveled around Europe and traveled fairly extensively around the U.S.A. ... hence if one year my \"vacation\" is spent in a studio with a bunch of photographer peeps I don\'t feel like I\'m \"missing out on seeing the world\"
...
now as to stuff I learned from the workshops that made them worthwhile to me.
There\'s more but I\'ll highlight one thing from each workshop:
Genesis - ok, so before Genesis I would go shoot a session, find interesting angles, interesting settings, get my creative groove on and do my thing. Then there would be the times when the creative juices didn\'t seem to be there... I\'d be uninspired and start getting cold sweats... freezing up... which would make me even LESS likely to come up with something... and yeah... not fun. @ Genesis I learned a methodology to get a rabbit out of the hat no matter what. It had never occurred to me that you can \"Plan\" creativity and in a sense \"fit it into boxes\" but you can, and I learned some boxes that make me MUCH more comfortable shooting in ANY location/situation. Yes I\'m sure I would have learned all this eventually on my own. I don\'t see a workshop as the key to impossible knowledge... it\'s more the MAP that helps you explore territory you didn\'t know you wanted to explore.
Sexy Business - I went to the workshop and while I didn\'t realize it at the time, I had no idea what moved me, what made me tick, what pissed me off about weddings, what I WANTED and what I believed. If one asked me \"why should I hire you\" I\'d probably lead off with some trite bullshit like \"because I\'m very creative, I\'m very attentive to detail, I\'m a fun person who is a blast to be around and who will help you have a great day on your wedding day\" or whatever. You know... just like every other effing photographer whose name starts with \"A\" ... or any other letter for that matter. My \"collections\" were based on seeing what other people offered, priced to match what other people priced, my gallery was just like everyone else\'s gallery, my coverage of a wedding was just like every other coverage of a wedding. I copied everyone and no-one and I had no idea what I really liked and why. And now I do. And now I come up with things in my packages that nobody else offers, and not just because I need to have something different in my packages, but because what I believe about weddings informs what I want my clients to have. And I keep coming up with new ideas, most of which are ridiculous, but they are ALL driven by again... what *I* believe is important. Oh and FWIW it\'s not like I went to the workshop and Todd said \"here is what you believe, this is your brand, now go out and rule the world\" ... I\'m actually not even sure how the heck Todd and Jamie and the rest of the attendees got *it* out of me, but it WAS in me.
Now this latter thing... that was never gonna happen on it\'s own. I\'ve done all those corporate \"find your mission\" exercises tons of times, and to be honest I thought I didn\'t have a \"core of beliefs\" because I could NEVER come up with anything that had any depth... it\'s as if I was shut out from my own inner self. Of course I may be relatively unique in this regard and maybe someone who is already more in touch with what gives meaning to their work would have found the workshop useful but not AS useful as I did. But I paid for MY Workshop, not yours... and in my case it was worth A HELLUVA LOT more than I paid.
No workshops for next year btw.
Ciao!
Alessandro
Dec 12, 2011 at 09:52 AM
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