On the road to find out

Yesterday at ICP Bradly Treadaway and I talked about how we could improve our teaching. One of the topics we touched on was the idea of substance, specifically technology training, and we asked ourselves what should be included in our curriculum, and what might be unnecessarily clouding the issues.

This morning I answered emails from more students wondering about classes for next term - what they should take in order to keep advancing towards becoming a photographer - and caught up on some photo blogs. One thread in particular, from APL, has caught my attention lately: it started when Haggart posted an email he'd received from a photo-school graduate who was having difficulty "making it" in the photo world. Nearly 200 replies later (I added my own thoughts today, in fact), the conversation is going strong. It's totally engaging, if you're interested in the business of photography and the education of photographers, and has touched on many of the concerns I hear expressed in the classroom - namely, what do I have to do in order to work successfully in photography? If that question resonates with you, I strongly recommend browsing that thread.

Additionally, and you've heard me say this in class, the most important thing you can do to become more of the photographer you want to be is to keep taking pictures. That sounds insane! Of course! It's so obvious! But again and again I find that photographers, and especially people learning photography, forget this basic part of the process.

Learn photography by doing it. No matter what else is happening in the classroom, technology, aesthetics, history, business practices - whatever! - your picture-engine only starts when you're actually making pictures. In other words, "but I don't know what to photograph," or, "but I'm not inspired," or, "but nothing was interesting today," - or whatever you hear yourself saying when you rationalize why you didn't make any pictures today - this is the major stumbling block and the thing that takes the most effort to overcome. If you're not progressing in your photography, it's not because of business being down or the computer making you crazy, or because of any of the other million little things that rise up to block you: it's simply that you don't have the camera in your hands.

Here's something I learned when I was teaching introductory photojournalism and writing in the 1980s: when students reply to the prompt "write about something that happened today" with "but I don't know what to write about," request that they put their pen to the paper (or their hands to the keyboard) and begin writing the phrase "I don't know what to write." Sounds insane, yes? But amazingly, nobody can write that phrase more than a few times without kick-starting their brain into a more interesting cycle, which then becomes the subject of their writing. Writing becomes writing. The activity, the behavior, the process - becomes the content, the reason to engage.

Yes, you see where I'm going with this. Step away from the computer and pick up your camera and start making pictures. In a matter of seconds you'll forget that you don't have anything to photograph, because you'll be photographing. And you'll find yourself on the road to photography.