learning from photos on line????

[Preston]

But first you have to teach yourself to see. Looking at pictures and learning to see comes ahead of everything else. Technical things are dead last--they're only needed when you finally know what you want to see in what you do, to make that happen. The technical stuff is the tiniest little bit of the whole process, meaningless without solidly conceived and executed subject matter. On on its own, it doesn't mean a thing.

+1 This really is the crux of the matter, in my opinion.

Nice post, Michael.

--P

[alavergh]

?...and sometimes "gee, I wish I lived in the Southwest or California, we just don't have that in NJ!"

Same here, but insert Indiana.

By looking at the photos here, I know what I'm actually looking for when I make test strips. "Oh! That's how I can get a print to look like the one so-and-so posted the other day."

[SergeiR]

Inspiration/ideas on gear use/ideas on light/ideas on composition and so on. There is a lot to learn

[stradibarrius]

I think that ideas and inspiration are the two main thing that I get from looking at others work. Through the years I have learned that you can't really tell much about the specifics of the image from a digital rendering. Your monitor plays such a big part, how the image was processed etc.
Thanks for all the great post!

[h2oman]

Same here, but insert Indiana.

By looking at the photos here, I know what I'm actually looking for when I make test strips. "Oh! That's how I can get a print to look like the one so-and-so posted the other day."

This guy used to post some here:

http://www.dlinphotography.com/Main.html

Frankly, I'd rather look at his pics from Indiana than a lot of southwest/Yosemite images I've seen.

[Kuzano]

As far as I can see, the process of digitizing (scanning) an image from film to digital, DOES NOT carry forward any of the information that one would normally find in a file produced by a digital camera. I don't think you will ever see EXIF information about the original film capture, such as focal length, exposure settings, and other useful specs about the original camera settings on the film camera. A scanner cannot create that information, because it is not in the film image being scanned.

So, my response would be NO, other than composition, but even then, you don't know if the digital image was cropped for composition, which is the routine lazy man way of composing through any viewfinder.

So again, No to any useful information looking at files on the internet, unless there is text explanation for each image giving you the information you seek.

My suggestion would be that looking at images on the internet would be a relative waste of time for specifics used to take the image in the first place.

Now a site dedicated to teaching photography might be another story altogether, where images are used to illustrate results, where the image specifications are explained in course material.

Depending on how you specifically learn best, an actual seminar or classes that you attend personally may be better. As a Community Education instructor, I know, and you may know as well, that everybody has a way that they learn best. I suggest that videos and internet courses may be one of the least effective means of learning for a lot of people.

First examine how you learn best... what system of information delivery seems to stick in place for you.

[jbenedict]

I have gotten much more out of AA's book of examples where he explains what he did and why than I have ever gotten just from looking at one of his photographs. I enjoy his photos unexplained much more now that I've had them explained to me. I can get more out of others work and am able to decided what it is I want to try to do after the examples. AA was a great photographer but I think his ability to explain himself as his greatest gift.

[Harold_4074]

Technical things are dead last--they're only needed when you finally know what you want to see in what you do, to make that happen. The technical stuff is the tiniest little bit of the whole process, meaningless without solidly conceived and executed subject matter. On on its own, it doesn't mean a thing.

I agree completely, if "technical stuff" is meant to mean the kinds of things---film, developer, sharpness--that are so easily changed in translation from film to raster image. But there is a great deal of "technique" that sets really good work (Ken Lee, Christopher Broadbent, and Gandolfi come immediately to mind, but there are many, many others) apart from anything that I would be likely to come up with on my own. So when I look at the galleries, my first thought is: "do I like this?" and if the answer is yes, the second thought is: "okay, why, exactly?". I have learned an enormous amount by trying, not to make the exact same picture, but one which "works" for the same reasons. Sometimes this is a matter of technique, sometimes not, but it is nearly always enlightening.

[swmcl]

Although the sentiment that technical things are dead last is true in the end, I think the technical issues are the icing on the cake so to speak. It starts with an ability to 'see' but to get to the final product you cannot proceed without a knowledge of 'how'. In fact, the 'how' cuts in the moment after the 'seeing' has taken place. It would be only an unrepeatable fluke to get an image to turn out on film as envisioned without a good handle on technical issues. I guess that I am referring to images that require something a bit more than shooting at a mid-range aperture and a middle distance with an incident meter reading in average lighting conditions !

Personally, I am very indebted to the LF community for sorting out my stupid thinking at times. It is also actually very difficult to get precise and objective facts sometimes in a community of arty people. The mystery and black-art of technique is a barrier to my progress for sure. Sorry, but I like to know enough about the techniques so that they aren't a barrier to my final image. It would be good to get a good amount of the 'how' out of the way early in one's photographic 'career' and I hope that there is a limit to how much 'how' you really need.

[Rory_5244]

On viewing the pictures here I've learned that my pictures really suck!