" I Want To Learn Photography From The Beginning "

Okay. Can do. Here's your Bitumen of Judea and your lavender oil. I'll meet you up on the roof... Not quite that far back? You wouldn't consider polishing copper plates and boiling some mercury? Can I interest you in a cup of collodion and a biscuit? Finding out what to do with a camera can be as difficult as learning to fly an airplane - if you believe some of the literature. You'll discover some of it at your local free council library. Just follow the smell of dust and mould until you get to the section on photography and look for the three books they'll have on the subject. Or go down to the book shop and ask for the slim $ 85 paperback monograph on the sewers of Paris and take it from there. Or enrol at a local technical college and do it the easy way. It may take several years to get up to speed but eventually you'll be good enough to emerge. You might spend some time in your local camera club or photographic society and see if the field trips and workshops will help - at least you'll have a lot of fun. Or take an online course. I fancy one dealing with a well-known post-processing program, but I just know that when I have sent off my money it will either fail to load or prove to contain the digital equivalent of the local library shelf. This cynicism has been engendered by months spent looking at YouTube and trying to force myself to see each presenter through to the end. I've come to the conclusion that the ones who know what they are doing do not know how to tell it to you and the ones that know how to tell you have no idea what they are doing. And whatever you do, don't poke at the screen with your finger - you'll just shift to another video and have to claw your way back to the one you were originally watching - and it will start again at the beginning ad... You could drift into a camera shop and ask for advice. If you drift in before the noontime rush, and ask sensible questions, you could drift out again with sensible answers. If you try it at lunch or five minutes before closing time the answers will become shorter, without necessarily becoming more sensible. In any case, find the staff member who actually does what you want to do and befriend them. They may bore you with their exploits, but there will be a core of useful advice there somewhere. Photography is not rocket science. We told that to Robert Goddard and he refused to believe us; now look at the mess we're in. But in your case, it has become easier than you might suspect with the advent of the closed loop of the digital world. You can point, shoot, look, change, and shoot again. The expertasi who decry you for looking - using the pejorative of " chimping " for the simple act of looking at the screen - disguise the fact that they have done it all along in the film era - with less success. The Polaroid and Fujifilm instant film backs were the expensive chemical previews that let people correct their errors before others saw them. As a new photographer you can be let loose on an unsuspecting digital world with little fear that you will frighten the horses. Be bold. You will eventually learn how to see interesting shapes and colours before you press the shutter release and how to preserve them through to the point where someone tells you that they would have done it differently. By that stage of the game you can do it differently yourself and snap your fingers at them.