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Stephen Walton
Should you help out your fellow photographers? For example, if you’re earning money as a commercial photographer and a friend asks for some tips to get into the industry just like you, would you consider sharing your knowledge or give them some really vague tips that could be found by a quick Googling?
We wanted to find out what the current viewpoint is from real photographers out in the field and see which is the most common opinion. Should we shy or share?
This conversation is really useful to figure out what type of photographers we are surrounded by?
Are we generally a helpful bunch or are we secretly hoarding ideas and tips for fear of others becoming better at our expense?
Maybe you’ve never thought of the topic at all and now wondering which side of the fence you fall on. Would you shy or share?
We’ve done some real market research in the iPhotography offices to bring you the vital stats to answer this question, if you want to know the answers then stick around for a few minutes longer.
Training the next generation of photographers is the complete foundation on which iPhotography was based on so this video is a topic close to our hearts and values as a community.
We have over 110,000 active members across our photography courses and we have been providing them with the best teaching methods for years. We’ve helped people achieve their dreams of starting up their own photography business and others dramatically just improve their snap shots.
So, it’s interesting to find out if those photographers who have benefitted from our teachings would happily pass it on to a friend in need? We’d like most of us would pass on a few little helpful hints or tips regarding basic photography, camera and lens choices. We wanted to position the issue in a slightly different way.
We posed a question to our community through the iPhotography website, Facebook, twitter and Instagram over the past few weeks;
We posed the question this way to see if aspiring photographers would give up information to a potential competitor. Before we look at the results, it’s worth discussing the benefits to sharing your tips?
Do you ever find yourself browsing through Instagram for example and seeing the same types of photos over and over again, maybe they’re a little tweaked in editing but fundamentally are copies of someone else’s work?
Maybe if we were to share our ideas more readily it would create a more diverse pool of images over time if we actively seek to help new photographers. This way surely photography would be constantly evolving.
There are also some of us who have amazing ideas about composition and ways of telling a story in an image, but they just aren’t able to shoot it for whatever reason.
Wouldn’t it be nice to see that story being told and sharing it with the world regardless of who the author is? After all some people don’t know who directed their favourite movie, but they love the movie still.
Of course, there are also valid reasons for not giving away your well-earned insider secrets especially if you are a seasoned photographer or a working professional.
Imagine seeing an influx of competitors dilute your market share of your portrait business for example and you then have to start changing your approach or pricing because you helped a few eager starters get into the industry.
Keeping knowledge to yourself would in this instance protect your job and income to a degree whilst also keeping you one step ahead of any newcomers, so surely this isn’t a bad thing because at the end of the day we’ve all got to pay the bills.
Even if you aren’t a professional photographer who’s income relies on their work, would you still share your learning to people that wanted to be a pro someday for free?
As you can see there are a few different ways of looking at this situation, but ultimately facts and figures speak for themselves.
Let’s have a look at the results of our poll to see what you said in our video.
At iPhotography we are big believers in sharing and caring. We live and breathe photography, we know the problems, pitfalls and hardship.
But we also know what success tastes like which is why we want to give you all the information to make sure the next generation of photographers achieve their dreams faster. We find inspiring images every single day in our iPhotography gallery.
Regardless of experience, a great image is a great image and we still get inspired by your images so whatever you position on this debate then still keep posting your photos. We love being motivated and it pushes us forward to be better educators.
And as you’ll find with iPhotography our ethic of sharing with learning brings together a fantastic network of photographers, new and experienced and we are always talking and helping each other improve everyday and you never know where this open networking can lead. Maybe opportunities for the future? Who knows? The future could look bright when you open up!
It’s been a really great conversation to delve deep in to and I’m really glad we’ve got some solid answers for you too. But of course, there’s going to be some of you that disagree, which is completely fine, and we’d love to hear from you.
Tell us your thoughts on the shy or share situation? Have you ever found that you’ve given someone advice only for it to be at the detriment of your own photography?
Or have you gone to the dark side and given someone fake information either for your amusement or to keep ahead of the game?
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