The Learning Process
By William Lulow
Nothing teaches quite like motivation. As a teacher of photography, I have had many students who have exhibited several different levels of involvement in the learning process. Some are able to devote a fair amount of time, others become week-end photographers. The problem is that when you are motivated to learn something, you kind of naturally devote all your time and energy to the task. I have used the comparison of Tiger Woods in golf. Someone once asked him how he got to be so good. His answer: hit 1000 golf balls a day! Well, as a golfer myself, I can maybe hit 50 in an hour if I try really hard. After a while, my hands, arms and legs just get tired and I can’t seem to keep up the pace. Apropos of this, let me describe how I learned photography and studio lighting.
One of the first things I did was to take my prints to a photographer in Denver, where I really began to think of photography as a career. He was nice, but his reaction to my work was to say, “Come in to my darkroom and let me show you how to make really good prints!” With all the time I spent making my prints, this was tantamount to a real slap in the face. But, it served the purpose of showing me what I still had to learn. From then on, I decided to immerse myself in how to make really strong photographs. So much so, that I completely uprooted myself and moved back to New York City, my home town. I got jobs with other photographers to see how they made images. I obtained the entire set of the Time/Life books on Photography, which were published back in the 1970s. I slowly accumulated equipment after carefully studying which lights to buy, based on what I saw in the studios that hired me. I literally looked at every single magazine on the newsstands to see what kind of lighting photographers who shot the covers used. I read the Time/Life books, not once, but several times cover-to-cover, to make sure I understood all the concepts that were being discussed. Then, I decided to spend an entire year, studying studio lighting with one of the great masters, Philippe Halsman.
Halsman was a Life Magazine photographer who wasn’t actually on staff at the magazine, but was assigned by the photo editors to shoot over 100 covers, more than any other photographer. And, since Life was basically a picture magazine, that was saying quite a lot indeed. Halsman’s approach to making portraits was an extremely personal and personable one. He got to know his famous subjects and he had a way of making them feel comfortable while he was photographing them. He had a very methodical technique to setting up lights, where any light he added complemented the ones he had set up at the outset.
Since I had made a conscious decision to make photography my life’s work, I was extremely highly motivated to learn just about all there was to know about it. The interesting thing turned out to be the fact that when digital cameras and techniques came out, I had to learn everything all over again. The only thing that will never change in photography is the application of light. So, light is the one constant in an ever-changing technological world. Now, one can make an image without light, with infrared film or infrared filters on digital cameras. And, there are x-rays! But other than those, you need light to make images. There are many different cameras, lenses, lights and such on the market. So, which one you use is largely a matter of personal preference.
Light behaves in certain predictable ways and photographers, no matter what equipment they use, need to learn how to use light to make the images they want. They have to learn their way around all sorts of equipment. Photography, after all, depends on equipment to produce any image at all. It would be nice if we could simply blink and there would be a picture. But, we are not at that stage yet. Even iPhones take some thought and learning to get good pictures.
So, the immersion factor is key. Not only is immersion the best way to learn a foreign language, but it is probably the best way to learn anything.
In Keith Richards’ book entitled (appropriately) LIFE, he mentions that he would often sleep with his guitar right by his bed. That way, when he got an idea in his sleep, the guitar was right there to help translate his ideas to music. I can remember whenever I got a new camera, lens or other piece of equipment, I would literally play with it night and day until I learned everything about it: how it worked, how it felt, how to take it apart and put it back together. So, there is no piece of lighting equipment, even these days, that I don’t know how to use. Knowing all about cameras works the same way. The only difference is that a camera may have settings in different places. So, it always takes some time to become familiar with them. But, those settings still work the same way to achieve results in pictures.
The take away here is to immerse yourself in all your equipment until you know it backwards and forwards. If your goal is to become truly proficient in the picture-making process, that’s what it takes. Constant repetition, reading, practice and learning until you feel comfortable. Then your creativity will be able to shine.
Sarasota, Florida. Sunrise 2018
