Zebrabot wrote: You don\'t learn how to take photos from a 300 page book. The fact that you\'re busy as a trainer is proof of this. I do work with a darkroom and we train people without the typical 50 page, 30 year old, photocopied 15 times manuals. We keep the film development times bible handy, but for anything else we teach through doing. So far, nobody has even requested a manual, or needed one.
You are comparing teaching a process or way with teaching facts. Apples and oranges.
It\'s the difference between technique and technical details. You can and should teach technique first (process), even if it is only rudimentary. At some point, people who want to master it will want technical details. That informs and enlightens technique which then improves and deepens.
One can become a kind of a master by repetition in the same tradtion as things like sushi chefs being masters in part by preparing the sushi rice thousands of times. But sushi preparation is not a technical art like photography which uses precision technical instruments and processes.
One can become a very good printer by repetition, trial and error, getting extremely good at things like dodging and burning.
But to become a master printer like Ansel Adams, making archival prints of the highest quality and overcoming significant technical challenges, one has to have an understanding of chemistry and optics as well as lengthy actually experience using them.
The process of composing pictures and seeing lighting is somewhat intuitive and can be learned to some extent by lots of repetition. It is very different from the technical details needed to make a streaked photo of an athlete with a sharp image at the end of the action. The former doesn\'t need a manual, though it benefits from looking at thousands of well-composed and well-lit photographs, so in a sense books of photographs are the manual for that. The latter can be taught by a lot of hand-waving and laborious description, but really does benefit from studying a manual with diagrams and charts and photographs of equipment like focal plane shutters.
Feb 21, 2012 at 09:58 PM
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