Photography education is a scam – I never studied sports photography, but still got to shoot the Olympics

I didn’t go to photography school. I didn’t sit in a darkened lecture theatre learning about the rule of thirds from someone who hasn’t picked up a camera outside of a staff room in years. I never paid for a degree and never had a student loan looming over my head like a heavy grey sky.

What I did instead was teach myself. I went out and shot. I made mistakes, I learned from them, and I repeated the process over and over until I got good. and I must have got "okay" because I ended up photographing the Olympic Games – not once, but multiple times – no diploma needed!

There’s this idea still floating around, like a stale whiff of fixer in the darkroom, that you need formal education to become a "real" photographer. That without a piece of paper with your name on it, you're not legitimate.

But here’s the truth: the best photographers I know didn’t get their skills from sitting in classrooms.

They got them from shooting day in, and day out. You don’t learn how to deal with a stroppy Olympian or a charging rugby forward from a textbook. You learn by doing – and preferably with a camera in one hand and your dignity in the other.

Of course, I get why some people go down the university route. For some, having structure helps. Some people thrive in academic settings and need deadlines, critiques and the gentle nudge of a tutor who tells them to maybe not submit blurry photos of their cat again.

And hey, if you're lucky enough to have parents footing the bill or you're just in it for the college experience, then fair play.

But let’s be honest: most photography degrees leave students in debt by the thousands, armed with the knowledge they could’ve learned faster and cheaper on YouTube, and saddled with the illusion that a degree guarantees a job. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

Photography is a trade. It’s a craft. It's about instincts, decisions made in split seconds and learning to see light like a painter sees brushstrokes. It’s about screwing up your settings and missing the shot of the winning goal, and then never making that mistake again.

You can’t teach that kind of grit in a seminar. No professor ever prepared me for what it’s like to edit 1,000 images in a hotel room at 2am with a Wi-Fi connection that moves like dial-up. But real life did!

The gear’s cheaper than ever. The access to education – free education – is better than ever. You’ve got entire careers' worth of knowledge online, free tutorials, masterclasses and, yes, even TikToks that show you how to light a portrait better than any second-year student exhibition.

So why are people still mortgaging their futures for a certificate that says they can compose an image? Show me your portfolio, not your diploma.

If you ask me, photography education – at least the formal kind – is the biggest scam in the creative industry. You don’t need a degree to make beautiful images. You need hunger. You need time. And you need to be okay with failing, often.

So save your money. Buy a second-hand camera. Go shoot. The real-life experience of trial and error will teach you far more than any classroom ever could.

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Pick up one of the best beginner cameras or best cheap cameras and just start shooting – you'll learn more and faster than you will reading a textbook or listening to a lecture!