bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

There is value to both ends, shooting and PP, there is an art to shooting it right the first time, even shot right PP can improve the composition, PP can also create even more artistic effects after the shoot.

fotogk Loc: Tuftonboro, NH

The best camera is the one you have with you to capture what you see. Photography is all about seeing. I teach a 2 year photography program at a high school. Black and white film we spend 3 days, digital camera we spend months and months. but we don't have the budget to allow students to carry a dslr around with them all the time. smart phone always with them getting them to see and working the subject is the skill that is the hardest to achieve.

Shutterbox60 Loc: Calif. USA

I took a class at my local college a few years back. It was a disappointment for me. It's the same at the college level, nothing taught about the art of photography. It was all about image manipulation using Photoshop CS.

Shutterbox......

JCam Loc: MD Eastern Shore

That course seems more like and "easy" B or C course than any real attempt to teach "Photography" in any of its aspects--shooting, processing, or understanding the various technical aspects. Has the teacher every used anything beyond a simple box or P&S camera? Although all the "experts" seem to say that a smart phone is all you need, and the general public (that mostly only shoots family stuff) is moving that way, it isn't Photography; it's picture taking like I did in my pre-teens back in the late '40's! Maybe he/she doesn't really know enough to teach a Photography course? :thumbdown:

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Lyn, and so it starts. A new generation of photographers who can "fix it in Photoshop".
--Bob

Mark7829 Loc: Calfornia

What most in these forums lack....( with you as an exception of course)

fotogk Loc: Tuftonboro, NH

I don't buy the piece of fix it in photoshop it is taking further then what the the camera could do. If you look at outstanding images the camera is a part of the puzzle then post processing to we can show what we felt when we took the image. Not only seeing but feeling.

Photocraig

Unless young people are attracted to a subject like Photography, they will continue on in blissfull ignorance of what a Photograph IS. I've had even older adults say, you're the only one who lugs around a big camera. The biggest sin a teenager can commit in their peer dominated worlds is to be "the only one" anything.

Teach 'em on their iphone and a few will get hooked. Then it's GAS forever!

Mark7829 Loc: Calfornia

I agree, get it right in camera and optimize it in post. RAW images are your digital negatives and post processing is required. Post processing in that regard is not fixing. Tell Ansel that his 5 year effort to improve upon "Moonrise Hernandez" was fixing.

mtbear

Our county teaches photography at a centralized vocational school, kids are bused in for a 2 hour session, there are 3 different sessions a day to serve all the schools in the county. They are required to have an SLR, film or digital, at least thats what it was 10 years ago. It works out well. Because it is a vocational center the emphasis is on commercial skills.

This gives schools the opportunity to offer classes they couldn't ordinarily justify because of limited demand. It works out for everybody, the schools and taxpayers save money and the students get classes their school couldn't afford

jimmya Loc: Phoenix

That's a shame.

stan0301 Loc: Colorado

A camera is a box with a hole in it--how does a phone not meet that?--I use Nikon 810 and my iPhone 6 does a whole lot better job of metering than the Nikon--same rules apply to any picture regardless of how it was taken
Stan

jimmya Loc: Phoenix

I suppose so but if the class in question is only worried about PP and other enhancements where's the framing,
composition and style training?

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

A few observations:

Differences in approach may have more to do with course scope definition — and the knowledge, skills, experience, and abilities of the instructor — than anything else.

It's a topsy-turvy world, isn't it?

Photography is a huge, vast field, with thousands of different applications. iPhoneography is but one of them. This old pro knows that the choices of composition, light, moment, angle, and scene *can* be learned on a smart phone. As others have said here, once those "gateway drugs" take hold, the "harder stuff" of fully adjustable cameras, lenses, and lighting gear become tolerable, attractive, and even sensible for some. Better to have a REASON to buy the expensive stuff, than to buy it first and never really learn why it's there or how to use it!

Teaching "traditional" film-based photography in 2015 is best left to the few ancient purists in university art departments. No self-respecting wannabe pro in the USA, and few actual American professionals, use(s) film these days! The few who do are either close to retirement and set in their ways, or have carved out very special niches for their work.

The few instructors who cling to the idea that photography must be taught with film cameras have ulterior motives. Either they don't have the classroom resources for digital, or they are afraid to ask the students to have an adjustable *digital* camera, or they simply are not comfortable in the digital environment.

The digital revolution began well over 20 years ago, and really started to heat up about 20 years ago. It accelerated rapidly! Most American cutting edge pros had abandoned film by 2007 or so. (That's the year the $60 million lab business I was a part of ripped out all the film processors!) The introduction of the iPhone that year set the digital world on fire. Hundreds of millions of iDevices and Android devices later, the digital fire is white hot!

I recall reading the Time-Life Library of Photography book series back in the 1970s and again in the 1980s. That two-foot wide shelf load of books contained a pot load of information about all kinds of photography. It was then I learned that the field of photography was piled wide, high, and deep with imaging opportunities.

So I wouldn't sweat that smartphone photography is what they teach. The vast majority of professional and commercial photographers work digitally. Well over 90% of all photographs wind up on the Internet now! Nearly everyone has a smart phone these days, and we all use them constantly as "digital Swiss Army Knives." All the better that a teacher had the insight to start with this common denominator tool.

There is nothing wrong with learning f/stops, shutter speeds, ISO, focal length, depth of field, the zone system... (etc. ad nauseam). But start with the sensibilities of light, contrast, color, line, form, moment, and composition, along with some basic post-processing skills and concepts. The elements of control can and will follow in due course.

I would argue that those who truly want to learn photography need to read, work with their cameras, and reflect on what they have recorded. Owning "the means of production" — and using it often — is probably necessary for significant growth in the field.

Finally, I'll point out that the best of us are at least partially self-taught. Even a great photography course can only go so far in a limited amount of time. True photographers never stop learning. We learn by reading, observing the works of others, doing our own work, shopping for gear, and in many other ways.

Classes and seminars can feed us packets of knowledge and give us a little structure and a little push, but perhaps not a whole lot more. The good stuff is absorbed over time, internalized via experience and reflection. Study the works of Socrates and Plato for a little more insight.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

Great observation about dSLR metering. The iPhone even auto white balances far better! I wish Apple would join forces with a camera manufacturer... They could teach them a lot of lessons about image processing.