How To Get The Most Out Of A Workshop

Getting The Best Out Of A Workshop
When I wrote the articles on 'Taking Your Photography To The Next Level', I recommended a workshop as a solution to a number of problems in improving photography. Which particular workshop you choose to attend will depend on your budget, time available and the kind of photography you are interested in but there are some ideas I’d like to suggest to get the most out of any workshop you do decide to attend.

Probably the best way to attend a workshop is to have an open mind, lots of enthusiasm and a willingness to put out a lot of effort. Here are some more specific pieces of advice:

1) If you choose to attend the workshop with new equipment, order it well enough in advance to get thoroughly familiar with it - little point in spending the time fumbling with settings when you should be learning other things, or even worse, showing up with faulty equipment. Dumb, dumb, dumb!

2) become very familiar with the work and teachings of your instructor(s) where possible. Read any books they have written and come up with questions you would like answered. Theoretically you risk knowing all the answers and making any lectures boring but if you are ready with questions I don't think that is a big issue. I remember attending a Fred Picker workshop in the 80's and he went out of his way to tell everyone that they must know his technical books before attending the workshop - but most didn't and lectures started at the beginning and with the assumption the material hadn't been read. People are lazy, many of the photographers attending think of it as a bit of a holiday (and you don't work on holidays or for holidays, right> Wrong!)

3) make sure you have the kind of equipment suitable to the workshop you have chosen - it’s possible to shoot baseball with a 4X5 but not really practical. A birding workshop needs long lenses and fast cameras. Typically though you don’t need a better camera for workshop attendance. You’d look pretty dumb though showing up to a landscape workshop without a decent tripod. Keep in mind though that workshops sometimes change your ideas of what equipment you need so keep pre workshop expenses to a minimum. Acquiring a 4X5 just for a landscape workshop is stupid unless the workshop is specifically about teaching the use of the 4X5 - some are. I wouldn't hesitate to show up to a workshop with a consumer digicam if that's all you have.

4) if part of the workshop is presenting a portfolio of your work, start three months in advance to print your work and take the trouble to present it well - this usually means dry mounting images on matte board. Overmats are just a nuisance as are plastic sleeves that need emptying to look at a print. I remember attending one workshop with 13X19 prints, nice large white border so the images looked really good, but when it came to leaning them against the wall, they all sagged down - they should have been mounted.It's faster and easier (all be it more expensive to simply get a bulk rate on dry mounting from your local framer if you aren't already doing this kind of work. If all you can afford is drugstore 4X6'es then fair enough, but see if you can present them nicely.

5) Plan on working harder than anyone else at the workshop - that means getting up before sunrise and heading out photographing on your own if it isn’t already part of the schedule, or even better, get another keen person to join you. I remember one workshop at which the scheduled called for breakfast at 8 am. Two of us grabbed an early taxi at 5 AM into town to photograph some bridges and waterfalls we'd seen. We put in a good two hours of work and still got back in time for breakfast. Plan to use any free time to photograph or to corner instructors for a bit of one on one. Instructors love to help the individual who shows interest. They don’t appreciate students trying to show how clever they are - so name dropping, and clever quotes are unwelcome. Any question that starts ‘Don’t you think that.....” is generally a no no. These people are teaching you what they know based on the work they do. They typically have no time to get into what’s better than which discussions. Most of them have not done major side by side trials of equipment - they are too busy making photographs - so asking if Canon is better than Nikon or asking don't you think that software X is much better - when they have just spent an hour telling you how they use software Y to produce wonderful results is for them frustrating, annoying, and a complete waste of time. Take it for granted that showing up with fancy equipment will get you nowhere - it’s the images that count - want to be taken seriously then act seriously - be ready to listen to advice and to put in maximum effort.

6) Sometimes in field sessions, unless you make a point of asking for help, you’ll be left to your own devices. This may be exactly what you want, but if it isn’t, call for help. Do not be shy - there are NO dumb questions, just rude ones. Mind you this presupposes you weren't chatting about equipment with your neighbour when the lecturer was talking.

7) Should you be using film, be aware that communal darkrooms are often less than optimally clean (and that's putting it mildly) - even using them for loading film can be problematic, and processing and hanging film to dry downright risky. Consider any film processed at a workshop as expendable and strictly an exercise. Digital doesn’t create these issues but make sure you back up on your own devices rather than relying on ‘school’ computers to do it. I remember at one workshop having my portable hard drive fail, and one of the other participants very nicely burned me a CD of my images - but my machines couldn’t read it - something out of alignment. Fortunately he didn’t live on the other side of the country and we were able to resolve the difficulty. Always have a plan B for saving images.

8) Should there be any ‘exercises’, assignments and so on, I strongly recommend you participate fully and enthusiastically, even if the idea seems dumb at the time - it’s just possible the instructor knows something you don’t and photographic exercises have a way of transferring themselves to the kind of work you do.

9) take advantage of the instructor(s). Participate in coffee talks, ask advice, take the instructors aside for a more blunt assessment of your work - possibly showing them another dozen of your images. I have found they are quite happy to do this with keen students.

10) take advantage of being in a group to learn from the other students - it’s true that they are struggling too, but often with different issues, having solved some of the ones which you face. The fellow across from you with the dirty poorly printed images, may just have a better eye than you and might still have something to teach you.

Most of all, have a hell of a lot of fun, make new friends and really give your photographic enthusiasm a major boost.