Youtube Education
Ongoing development is an important part of a photographic career. The disciplines of business management, photo techniques, social media, advances in tech & AI, marketing, use of software and all sorts of other stuff keep changing, and if you’re not keeping up with those changes you’re sure to be left behind eventually. My original education was actually my obsession with taking pictures using an ancient, but rock solid Russian Zenit-E SLR as described in my post about “how I got here”.
After 20 years of random bullshit jobs to pay the bills, I gave it all up and headed back to college to study a Foundation Degree in contemporary commercial photographic practice at Newcastle College. After that two years I launched myself as a freelancer into the cauldron of commercial work and have found myself here after 20 years of survival.
I’ve done some personal training, participated in business courses and a networking group, and did a few interesting courses with the BIPP (I was a qualified associate member until I decided to quit the association as it wasn’t doing anything positive for me).
For the last ten years, my education has exclusively been based online - with forays into Javascript programming via the CGI Academy, and top end real-estate photography via Mike Kelley’s superb courses hosted on the F-Stoppers portal. The biggest source of knowledge however has become good old Youtube. The entire gamut of techniques is comprehensively covered by scores of absolute experts in their fields including real estate shooters, architectural photographers, video guys, and post production geniuses. My Youtube Premium subscription of about a tenner a month has paid for itself a hundred times over, and has pulled me out of many a deep hole by quickly providing the answers to a multitude of issues including Adobe Premiere Pro editing problems, balancing gimbals for video shooting, gnarly white balance issues, and tax stuff. Here are some of my favourite channels:
Piximperfect - everything image software related from beginner to absolute expert.
Nathan Cool Photo - US real estate photographer at the top of his game.
Adobe in a Minute - does what is says on the tin - enter a problem, it’ll have a solution.
Andrei Restrepo - RE stills, video, and business practices explained.
AT Architectural Photography - a quality operator explaining their techniques.
Taylor Brown - another RE stills/video shooter with loads of great guidance.
Tin House Studio - This one can depress me sometimes by drawing attention to my shortcomings in securing high-end commercial work, but the business advice is sound.
Lots of amazing links there. I stumble upon others all the time, and I always find it incredible that so many talented souls share everything they know on the Youtube portal.
