How do most people learn about photography? Like light painting, lenses, ways to blur the infront or behind...

Hi dear,

Firstly, your question is very broad and covers a lot :-)

Sure, you can do photography classes like the other people have said. You can also join a local photography group and share tips with each other. You can buy photography magazines also which are very helpful.

Now, that said... You also really need to just get out there and PRACTICE! take a lot of pix! through takinig a lot of pix and experimenting with your cameras settings, you will learn a great deal!

Some of the effects you see in some pix come from photoshop software also, so you could look into getting some software. A BRILLIANT free program that I use is GIMP 2. Available at www.gimp.org

Also, you will need to get good equipment... start off with an amatuer SLR camera and once you have experimented and got the FEEL for your camera and at taking pix that you are happy with, upgrade to better ones.

Also, the quality of the camera lenses are very important! Generally, if you have a telephoto lenes (a long lens) that can zoom up on people or things, if you practice getting the focal length right (by taking pics of an object at different distances from the object while focussing on the same object) you will see how you can BLUR the background and this is very important because if you have too many things in the picture in sharp focus, it is distracting to the viewer.

You want to have in focus the object that you want the viewers to look at.

Also, lenses with low f/stops... you will see lenses with a f/number like f/2.8 for example... this is very important for getting the blurring in the background also... the lower the f/stop number, the faster the lens is and easily blurrier the background could be once you get your focal lenght right (that being your varying distances from the subject).

Blurring the foreground comes hand in hand with blurring the background and by simply focussing on the subject which ISN'T in the foreground.

All the best with your photography friend.

Its funny how I didn't notice this until I saw this question, but almost half of the books I own (which is a lot of books) are completely about photography. Anyway, books are definately my favorite way to learn about photography. I wouldn't really call it "studying", because if you're really into it, it just kind of seems like reading the newspaper, or sports illustrated, or national geographic, because you like it so much, you don't even realize you're learning, or even reading. As for the internet, I never really liked it as much (I don't know why not, I use it for everything else, anyway), and classes...well, I never really had the money for hands-on photo classes.

I went to photography school.

You can use a variety of methods to learn the craft. There are some good tutorials on youtube.

a

sign up for free classes at your local ritz
or just go out and learn yourself, nobody likes bad pictures
remember its your own art, only for you

I took photography in high school there are also probably classes in your local community college.

middle/high school or a community collage or adult education or an apprentice

edit: <----you look familiar <_<

school, research, and practice!!!