Some people say they’re the best thing ever: but I find that I need a large pinch of salt and a great deal of patience to watch most of them. For instance, in a video about being entrusted with a model’s first ever shoot, I don’t want to hear about the photographer’s tethering software. That’s off topic, and off-putting.
One of my friends recommended a specific tutorial, and I had a look. I won’t name the friend (or the tutor) because I found the whole thing unwieldy and uninformative. What I’d call the ‘learning density’ was low, because there were few specific points that the novice could pick up on. There was a guided tour of a model session in a studio, but that isn’t novel for me, and many other people offer similar things, done better.
If the tutor had showed up at one of my workshops, I’d have been offering advice. Quite a lot of it. And while that is arrogant of me (he’s obviously earning more per day than I have got in my life from pictures), he provided a very poor model for novice photographers. This leads me to wonder about why anyone posts on YouTube (and yes, I’ve thought about doing it myself…)
Essentially, I came up with two reasons: ego and money. So you’re selling a product, or hoping to attract sufficient viewers that advertisers will pay you to let them share your webspace; or else you want to get your own name out there and show how clever you are. Guilty as charged, m’lud.
I know that I know a couple of things that deserve to be more widely understood, such as why my Alpha 7 (or, to be fair, almost any mirrorless system camera) is better than absolutely any DSLR, for doing the things I do. And I have an innate belief that I know a lot more besides, but that’s far more questionable! But the technical barriers between me and posting on YouTube are similar to those involved in doing my own tax return (though I need to address that this month, so maybe YouTube will follow…)
I’ve written about paid tutorials on the web before, and they were a mixed bunch. One was very good, very long, and requires multiple viewings – at nearly £100 and over five hours long, Thomas Holm had a lot to teach me, but would be accessible to almost anyone aspiring to studio work. Another tutorial, which was far cheaper (and came with a work book which strikes me as better than the video) offered me far less of value, and would – I’m pretty sure – be the same for others. ‘Best value’ is sometimes that which comes with a higher price tag.
Why is the Thomas Holm tutorial so good? Partly, it engages with exactly the sort of work that interests me, but there’s more to it than that. Holm demonstrates a casual and professional approach to both technicalities and his model – they have clearly worked together before, and are entirely at ease with each other. Holm isn’t hung up on the complexities of broadcasting – for the most part, they simply work right, so he’s clearly on top of them in the same way he’s quietly competent with camera and lights.
Most of all, perhaps, it’s that significant parts of the running time are devoted to explanation of what works, and why. That’s pure gold in teaching terms, and is missing from many of the other resources I’ve seen. And another factor is his model, Lilith Etch (you can see how physically perfect she is in some of Barrie Spence’s nudes of her on this site. Their working relationship is playful at the same time as being obviously both serious and highly productive of outstanding work.
It’s too late to ask Santa for the video as a Christmas present, so if you’re serious about shooting nudes, you probably need to put a Thomas Holm tutorial on your birthday list…
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