Education, education, education!

[ABERS]

Interesting concept and some good 'telling it how it is'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-20495489

The few people that I know that have or are attending structured tutor lead photographic courses either end up being able to expertly talk a photograph or start to beat themselves up with indecision and angst about their work.

One in particular was a talk given by a chap that could not for the want of trying get his much desired Associateship of the RPS. He displayed his failed panels and it was fairly obvious why. Troubled with paranoia he decided to take a 3 year Ba course in photography at a midlands university. He talked us through about an hour of his research and his final thesis, which at the end he got his BA.

At the end of his three years his photography appeared to me to be no different to his previous work, but by golly he could talk all about its 'inner meanings, its graphic equilibrium et al'. 

If you join the RPS you can be awarded your Associateship if you have a BA or something equivalent, so although he couldn't gain it by presenting a comprehensive panel of work, he circumvented the system.

[Simple]

Yes, I so agree with you Abers! We get a lot of people looking to work as an apprentice in our shop. Most of those have done or are doing Ba or equivalent type education in photography. Nearly all of them can talk about the history of photography from Cartier-Bresson via Man Ray and Irving Penn to David Lachapelle. Yet nearly all of them admit at being ignorant about shutter speed-Aperture-ISO, white Balance and basic photographic rules of composition and perspective. They all have dabbled in the Dark room with film, yet nobody has explained the digital camera and what it needs to process a JPEG. Most of them are Photoshop "experts", yet have never recieved tuition in PS and ruin all there pictures without knowing that they do so. Workflow is a term they have never heard of.
If it was just one college or University I would blame the tutors, but it seems to be countrywide.
It is my firm believe they teach those kids to be artists at University with all the idiotic babble that goes with it, and then sends them to photographers as apprentices to become photographers.
(Ooops, I was ranting, Rant now over)

[Hinfrance]

Maybe one of the comments on the article Alan linked wasn't too far of the mark when it stated that photography isn't art, because all you have to do is have an eye for a picture, press the shutter and the camera does the rest.

Personally I have no idea whether or not I could get an accreditation of any sort, but I don't really care. I take pictures for the hell of it fun.

As an aside, the mother of one of my daughter's school friends is a professional painter - ie she earns her income from painting: she was lamenting that when she took photographs of her work and printed them from her computer the colours were never the same - cue me wittering on about colour temperature/spaces/management/calibration as her eyes became increasingly glazed over. Maybe it was my French . . .