Photography Course Question

Brian979

Brian979

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I am looking for help with choosing a photography course.

I am currently looking at the following "Diploma in Professional Photography" courses:
- The Photography Institute
- The Institute Of Photography

I have found some reviews online but they are quite dated. Would love to hear from anyone who has experience with either of these courses or who knows anyone that has taken either of them and how they found them.

If anyone can recommend any other courses, that would be great too.

Basically, I am looking for a career change, in an effort to pursue something that I enjoy. I have been interested in photography and was living nomadically for ten years prior to COVID hitting. During my travels, my camera was always by my side and I would love to learn the skills I need, technical aspects and business side of photography that would be required to turn it into a business.

I learn best with structure so cherry-picking bits and pieces from the internet has not worked well for me. I don't think that I am a beginner but I think I need a structured course to figure out where I'm at and learn how to move forward.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
I would suggest a collection of specific courses:

1. Building a website course
2. Basic business course covering marketing, book-keeping (specifically cash-flow forecasting and controlling, invoicing and stock control, annual accounts (if self employed), business plans
3. Basic project management covering budgeting, managing costs against budget, planning tasks and tracking progress
4. Photography: producing to a brief, over a variety of different genres, briefs, delivery criteria
 
Thanks for the advice @lindsay

I have the first three suggestions already done. I can build my own website and have operated my own business in the past so I am ok on these fronts.
It's really just the photography part that I need to work on. Have you heard anything about "The Photography Institute" or "The Institute Of Photography" courses? They both look good but I cannot find any current reviews online.
Thanks
 
If it’s for your own knowledge you could try www.skillshare.com where you have tutorials/courses from many photographers so if you don’t like one there are others.
 
+1 on what Lindsay said, but also adding to that Marketing - e.g. being able to identify your niche and how you target it.

I'd also say photography can be quite broad, so there is little point doing a course that covers just about everything when maybe you need a something specialist to your niche. There is no point spending a month learning macro when you want to be a sports photographer, for example
 
It may be best to decide what you will be making money from in your photographic business, weddings, portraits, products, etc. and then find a course or even better someone who will take you on as a "second shooter" that focuses on the specific genre. A lot of what you need to know for the things I mentioned is really about lighting and not so much about using a camera.
 
On the photography side, it's worth considering the brand-specific courses on specific genre's eg the Nikon School. A longer course (of which I have no experience) would be the British Academy of Photography - at least their courses have some external validation and you can earn while you learn. Otherwise for full time courses Falmouth College.
 
Earning money from photography is 80-90% about the business aspects, which you say are already within your knowledge.

A lot of people try to "specialise in everything" which is bound to fail, we all need to have a true speciality (maybe two) and market our expertise.

You say that your weakness is on the technical side. That's good, many people don't recognise their technical weaknesses:) So, I suggest that you first identify your area(s) of speciality and then you will know where your technical weaknesses lie, and it should then be much easier to move forward.
 
Brian979 said:
Thanks for the advice @lindsay

I have the first three suggestions already done. I can build my own website and have operated my own business in the past so I am ok on these fronts.
It's really just the photography part that I need to work on. Have you heard anything about "The Photography Institute" or "The Institute Of Photography" courses? They both look good but I cannot find any current reviews online.
Thanks
Click to expand...
You say that you’re OK with operating your own business.

However IMHO the fundamental question on starting a business is whether the product you want to offer is something the market will pay enough for to satisfy your income needs.

So ‘needing help with the photography side’ is quite a fundamental flaw in your business plan. I’d like to think I had learned to bake a cake to the desired standard before embarking on a venture to make cakes for a living. And indeed that there’s enough people out there wanting to buy cakes.

Basically there’s millions of already good photographers who’d love to make money selling landscape / wildlife / aviation / motorsport images. But the market can’t sustain more than 1% of them.

OTOH the markets for people photography and product photography are considerably larger. The first requires people skills which most ‘photographers’ struggle with, the second requires a decent sized studio space and the ability to build great B2B relationships.

Learning to take pictures is pretty easy for anyone with the aptitude, so what is it ‘exactly’ you need to learn?

IMHO the kinds of courses you mention are snake oil salesmen; with a vague promise they can give you the skills required to be a ‘professional photographer’, and I’d bet that if you find anyone who’s completed the course they’ll absolutely not be working as professional photographers (even if they describe the courses positively).
 
Phil V said:
You say that you’re OK with operating your own business.

However IMHO the fundamental question on starting a business is whether the product you want to offer is something the market will pay enough for to satisfy your income needs.

So ‘needing help with the photography side’ is quite a fundamental flaw in your business plan. I’d like to think I had learned to bake a cake to the desired standard before embarking on a venture to make cakes for a living. And indeed that there’s enough people out there wanting to buy cakes.

Basically there’s millions of already good photographers who’d love to make money selling landscape / wildlife / aviation / motorsport images. But the market can’t sustain more than 1% of them.

OTOH the markets for people photography and product photography are considerably larger. The first requires people skills which most ‘photographers’ struggle with, the second requires a decent sized studio space and the ability to build great B2B relationships.

Learning to take pictures is pretty easy for anyone with the aptitude, so what is it ‘exactly’ you need to learn?

IMHO the kinds of courses you mention are snake oil salesmen; with a vague promise they can give you the skills required to be a ‘professional photographer’, and I’d bet that if you find anyone who’s completed the course they’ll absolutely not be working as professional photographers (even if they describe the courses positively).
Click to expand...
This.
And a general point: I remember reading that, at any time in the UK, there are more people studying for a DEGREE or HND in photography than the total number of people working as photographers. Not that a degree (or even an HND) is of any use, except for that tiny minority of people who need one to do an extremely challenging but very badly-paid employee job working for the NHS, the police or similar. I did a degree, many years ago, but it played zero part in any success that I had as a photographer - no clients were ever interested in it. There are a vast number of people selling courses in photography, often because selling courses pays them better than actually working as photographers, but these courses usually have no credibility and are of very limited value.

I had a website of course, but that didn't bring in any work, its only purpose was to make it easy for people to find me.

So, where did my work (advertising and commercial photography) come from?
1. Recommendations from existing clients
2. Repeat business from existing clients
3. Employees of existing clients moving to new jobs, and bringing in their own suppliers.
4. Relationships with other professionals, we would pass work on to each other and work together when needed.

There were a few oddities of course, one very large client came to me simply because they had held a board meeting on a Sunday and had decided that they needed a photographer to do a shedload of product photography for them, and I was the only one who answered the phone on a Sunday (call diverted from my studio landline to my mobile). Another came from a phone call where the secretary who had been given the job asked whether I could take aerial photos of their factories, and my immediate answer was Yes - even though I had no idea and you'd never catch me in a light aircraft, they scare me, but I knew someone who could do it. The aerial photography never materialised, but a lot of my own speciality work did, and I was the first person to answer "Yes" to that question.

Oddities will always happen, but they account for a tiny part of any success.

And, because I'm ancient, I had loads of training jobs (which no longer exist) before I had the knowledge and skills to set up on my own. Fast forward to today's over-populated market and, unless you have a very high level of specialised skills you'll be competing with a lot of other people who just fancy the idea of being a professional photographer, and the average client will shop for a photographer in the same way that I shop for odds and sods on eBay - always going for the lowest price. The result is a race to the bottom, and that's a race that isn't worth winning.

So, I'm NOT trying to put you off, but you do need to think this through properly, and do a lot of research.
 
Just in case this all looks overly negative.

Working as a photographer is almost as much fun as people imagine.:)

Photographers are generally helpful, and it’s fairly easy to gain knowledge from others. You just need to ask the question.:hug:

So asking what use a ‘professional photographer’ course is might not get you the response you expected, but asking where to learn about studio lighting, posing etc will lead you to loads of useful learning.
 
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