YouTube is a great pool of information about many things, also photography, but there is no guidance as how to use YouTube if you want to learn photography. In this blog post I share a few lessons learned from my own journey learning photography from scratch using YouTube. With a few awareness points, you can learn photography via YouTube both faster and more efficiently than what I did.
Know yourself
We all learn in different ways. Some like to read text, others to see pictures, yet others like practical exercises and hands-on experience. We learn in many different ways, and good school systems acknowledge this and make sure to cover different ways of learning.
YouTube obviously is a very visually oriented teacher, and only you know if this is a good way of learning in your case. If for example you know that your preferred way of taking in information is say via reading, you may want to vary the videos with blogs or other sources of information that presents the material in a different way. Many of the larger YouTube channels about photography also have a homepage with material and books available, often at a price, but it may be a good investment considering the time you may save .
Create your own structure
YouTube videos are often very specific. They compete with other videos about your attention, and to win that competition it is good to seek out a spot where others are not, and that tends to drive the content to be more and more specific. So overview and structure and helicopter view is not what you will find in the typical YouTube video. And it is difficult to know when you have covered all relevant ground to cover the basics of photography.
When you attend school there typically is a curriculum for the upcoming term. That tells you what you need to study, gives structure and also scopes what the final exam will be about. When you study on your own, you have to develop your own curriculum, otherwise you will be lost in the sea of information in the YouTube universe, and although you are making good progress, you lack some good yardsticks to measure your progress.
One way to make some structure is to narrow your searches for videos according to what type of photography has your interest. I know this is difficult when you are new to photography, but give it a shot still:
– Landscape photography
– Street photography
– Portrait photography
– Event photography (weddings etc)
– Product photography
– Abstract photography
– Architecture photography
– Wildlife photography, and so on…
Another dimension you can use bring some structure to your curriculum is to take the table of content from the manual of your camera! Yes, I know, this makes you want run away! But I am not asking you to read the manual (although it can be a good teacher), but just use the TOC as a guidance for your reading plan.
A third option is – yes I know it is old fashioned – to buy a book about the basics of photography. Joel Sartore has written a book that I find relatively easy to read: Photo Basics, published on National Geographic. Once you have read that book, you have a very good overview of the basics of photography and the TOC can be used to your YouTube searches to further deepen your knowledge.
Remember practice, practice and practice
It is tempting to binge watch YouTube videos in one long stream, and I did that as well. But remember to take a pause, to let the information sink in and for you to digest the information.
Secondly, it is important that you apply theory to practice and test what you have learned in real life. You think you know it when you understand it, but the practical appliance brings new dimensions to your knowledge and understanding. So don’t skip the “exercises” – apply what you have learned, and learn even more!
When you grow…
When you have been using YouTube for a while, you will find two things: (1) there are some YouTubers you like more than others and (2) suddenly you are thinking to yourself: I know this already! Both cases is a good sign that you have grown as a photographer and that you have learned a lot!
The few YouTubers that I enjoy may not be the same as those you have found or will find, but I share them anyhow to give you some search terms in case you are interested:
- Jamie Windsor (very good perspective on things)
- James Popsys (entertaining + you learn a lot)
- Tony and Chelsea Northrup (basics and reviews)
- Sean Tucker (street)
- Steve Perry (wildlife)
- Daniel Norton (flash especially)
- Tech Gear Talk (reviews)
- Omar Gonzales (Fuji + entertainment!)
These may not work for you, but then you will find others that do work for you.
Finally…
There will be good days and bad days. There will be days when you think “I shall never learn this!” – but don’t despair. Take a break. Go shoot some pictures instead, or do something else you enjoy.
Your brain needs time to relax and re-organize all the information you are feeding it, so see your down time as productive time in terms of processing and archiving all the useful information you are taking in.
With this, I wish you all the best on your journey to learn photography!