It’s been said the most important thing to learn is how to learn.
Most people will do a Web search when they need to learn something because it’s fast and free. But search engines offer disconnected, unverified information in random order. The searcher has to know how to interpret and verify the found information. They have to know how to learn.
The purpose of search engines is to offer shortcuts to what you *might* want to know. This is okay when you just want some quick information but it’s usually not good enough when you want to gain knowledge.
By making it easy, search engines don’t really help us learn. Search engines tell us what we asked for and not necessarily what we need to know. Search results can make you think you’ve learned something when, in fact, you haven’t (link to PDF). There’s a difference between knowing a few facts and actually learning something.
On the other hand, making things difficult, or rather more challenging, makes learning more effective. For example, unlike a web page, reading a book forces you to pay attention. This means it’s more likely that you will better understand something and there’s more chance of converting it into deep knowledge.
The Internet has indeed changed how we read and think. But does that really matter? You can just Google for facts and figures. But the richness of human intelligence is predicated on summoning our long-term memory. Creativity requires engaging our long-term faculties, in order to create new neural pathways and associations. By reading incessantly on the Internet, we scatter our minds, lessen our focus, and diminish our aptitude.
All of this leads to the real point of this post: another lazy photographer contacted me last night.
At 10:26pm on a Sunday night, someone emailed to say that she is a business manager of a Toronto-area company and she wanted my prices for business portraits and event photography.
The person wrote that she didn’t have any specific information on either their portrait needs or the event they were planning. So she asked that I send a complete list of all my prices related to portraits, business conferences and all other types of corporate events. She also requested that I send “as many ideas as possible” on how best to shoot these.
Really?
I tracked the person’s email address to the web site of a part-time photographer. According to her site, she offers $25 portraits and $500 weddings. The photos on her site are mostly snapshots from around town and some vacation photos.
Attention new photographers
We’re all happy you bought a camera. But that makes you a camera owner not a business owner.
If you want to learn something about running a photo business then go to school, take some night classes, attend some workshops and/or read some books. Trying to scam information from the Internet is a waste of time for all concerned.
True learning forces you to be an active learner rather than just a passive reader. Active learners ask why (e.g., “Why do I charge prices like this”) whereas passive readers just want to know what (e.g., “What do I charge for this”).
If you learn why then you’ll always know what.
Or to rephrase that: if I tell you what then you can run your business for a day. But if you learn why then you can run your business for a lifetime.
Mind your business by learning your business.
