How to Mentor an Aspiring Photographer

Many professional or highly skilled amateur photographers are approached by less-experienced or aspiring photographers looking for advice on how to get started in the field, how to become a photographer, how to learn the skills necessary to develop a career in the field or even just how to improve the quality of their photos. If you don't have a natural "teaching" personality, it can seem a bit intimidating even if you genuinely want to help the aspiring photographer. Follow these guidelines to become a great mentor!

Instructions

1. Look at your student's photographs. The fastest way to determine how you can help an aspiring photographer is to take a good look at a selection of photos she has taken. This will help you immediately identify areas where you can provide teaching, advice, counsel or other assistance to help the aspiring photographer improve the quality of her photos. Regardless of her other photography-related goals, good-quality photographs are a prerequisite to her success as a photographer.

2. Ask your student about her photography-related goals. The advice and counsel you provide to a photographer who aspires to shoot great sports action shots will be different than the advice you give a photographer who wants to do macro nature shots. The equipment is different, the technique is different and the means to achieving recognition in the field of photography in each particular niche is distinctly different. Asking your student ensures you will be helping her achieve her specific goals, not just inundating her with general information.

3. Assess whether you are the best photographer to mentor this student based on her goals and your experience. For instance, if you don't have experience shooting sports action, tell the aspiring photographer you don't and then (if you can) recommend another photographer who might be able to assist her with this specialty. As another example, a wedding photographer is not the best mentor for an aspiring wildlife photographer--and vice versa.

4. Start with the basics. Based on your assessment of the student's current photos, you should be able to identify some specific skills or techniques you can help the student learn that will have an almost immediate improvement on the quality of her work. Whether it is lighting, posing, composition or any other skill set, work with the student at her level to help her make basic improvements.

5. Use easy-to-understand language. Every field has its own technical jargon, and photography is no exception. But a beginning or aspiring photographer will not understand if you start talking to her in technical terms when she is still learning. So use language she will understand, tell her to ask for explanations if you say anything she doesn't understand and explain the meaning of any technical terms you do use.

6. Let the student set the pace. Some people learn faster than others. Most learn by actually "doing" rather than watching and listening, although that is an important part of the teaching and mentoring process, as well. In addition, some aspiring photographers will have endless hours to devote to the learning of the craft, while others will balance their passion for learning about photography with already busy lives. It's best to start with a few skills or techniques, help the student develop those and then move on to the next skill or technique after she has mastered them. Don't go too fast or try to impart too much information into a single session. Likewise, schedule your mentoring sessions according to your student's timetable and desire to learn in conjunction with your own availability.

7. Invite your student to assist, watch and learn. Letting a student follow you around or job-shadow you for a day while you're working can be a tremendous benefit to an aspiring photographer. She can learn a great deal about the profession, your working style and all of the different aspects involved in being a photographer, and she can identify what she doesn't know and needs to learn more about. She can pick up some valuable tips and even assist you with a photo shoot in the process. Hands-on is one of the best ways to learn.

8. Make an assignment. After you show or teach a specific skill or technique, give your student an assignment that will enable her to practice and develop this skill or technique hands-on repeatedly. Have her actually go out and take pictures and then bring the pictures back to show you what she's done.

9. Provide positive feedback. Encourage and motivate your student to keep learning, to keep practicing and developing her skills and to keep taking pictures by showing her the difference between some of the original photos she took and some of the new photos she took using a new skill or technique you taught her. Point out how the quality of her work is so much better! If she is having difficulty with a concept or technique, try teaching it again in a different way.

10. Work one on one with your student to show her how it's done. Professional photographers can talk for hours about a particular lighting technique, for example, and aspiring photographers can study diagrams of the lighting setups, but the single best way for an aspiring photographer to really learn it is to do it--and to have you right there showing her how to do it step by step and explaining what you're doing and why you're doing it at the same time.

11. Encourage your student to ask questions. The questions your student asks will help you assess what she is learning, how she is learning it most effectively and what you still need to teach her. It will help clarify any areas where she is having trouble or does not understand a skill or technique. It will help you help her achieve her photography goals.

Tips & Warnings

• As a mentor, you don't have to do all the teaching. Encourage your student to take a specific photography class or read and study a particular book to help her acquire knowledge, skills and techniques, as well.

• If you run a photography studio or other business and you have your student take some photos of your clients--for example, as a second shooter at a wedding--to gain experience, clarify in advance who will have ownership of the pictures produced. Be specific about how and where the images can be used, who will hold the copyright, if the photos will be considered a work for hire, if the student will be paid for her time shooting these pictures, if she can contact the client directly to sell the pictures she took or if they will be a part of the body of the studio's work taken for this event. This can become a really sticky situation, so it's best to clarify all issues before inviting a student to do anything that involves working directly with your clients or providing her access to your client information.