About the Academy
It all began with a woman walking into Martin Osner’s art gallery
She had never heard of him. She looked at the work on the wall, turned to her husband and said that if this artist teaches, she wanted to learn from him. Everything you see here came from that one sentence.
What we actually believe
There is an artist in everyone
Not everyone knows it, and most people have been told otherwise by somebody with a clipboard. Our whole job is getting it out of you.
How it all began
Six WhatsApp groups and a cup of coffee
The Academy was not planned. It was simply Ralf’s solution to a rather nice problem that was getting out of hand.
Before
You came to Hout Bay
Martin taught almost everything from his studio in Cape Town. If you wanted a class you flew in, from anywhere in the world, at enormous expense. By their own admission it was worth it.
Then
Andrea, and then Ralf
Andrea Armbrüster saw the work in the gallery and asked. She and Ralf flew from Germany for one week block courses, again and again. Andrea is now a represented artist at the Osner Gallery.
Covid
Samantha refused to let it end
Martin thought he was about to lose his teaching entirely. Samantha put him on Zoom, which he had never once considered, and suddenly people were arriving from all over the world because it was finally convenient.
The coffee
Ralf said there was a better way
Every class had a WhatsApp group and they were all on Martin's phone. It would not stop beeping through a friendly coffee. Ralf told him what he needed was a home for them. That was the day the Academy was born.
“It started as a community. The courses came afterwards, and only because people asked for them.”
Who we are
Three people, and none of them optional
Martin Osner
Co-founder, artist and teacher
Thirty five years of teaching, a college he founded and later sold, thirty years of commercial work, and a gallery in Cape Town. He wrote every technique the Academy teaches.
Read Martin's story
Samantha Lee Osner
Fine art photographic artist, and the digital half
An exhibiting artist in her own right, she teaches Photoshop for the Artist, runs the branding, and co-hosts the Open Mic. She is also the reason any of this went online at all.
Read Samantha's story
Ralf Armbrüster
Co-founder and managing director
He built the platform this runs on, and he runs the business from Germany. Student onboarding, the technical side, most of the webinars, and he hosts every Open Mic session.
Read Ralf's storyWhere we are
A real academy, run by real people
The administration runs from Germany, where Ralf is. The recording studios, the gallery and the making of everything happen in Cape Town, where Martin and Samantha are. Work is exhibited across three Western Cape galleries.
It is worth saying plainly, because a school on the internet could be anybody. This one has an address, a gallery you can walk into, and three people whose names are on the door.
Why the courses are unlike anything else
They were invented to solve a problem, thirty years ago
In the nineteen nineties Martin was running a photography college and watching it turn out graduates who were technically excellent and artistically invisible. They could expose anything and say nothing.
So he built a fine art module to fix it, and to build it he spent years in darkrooms and studios inventing, testing and refining techniques that did not exist as a curriculum anywhere.
Those experiments are the direct ancestors of every course here. That is why they carry his fingerprint, and why you will not find them anywhere else.
Thirty years ago the problem was photographers who were technically brilliant and artistically invisible. It is still the problem. We have simply had a very long time to work on the answer.
Who is allowed to teach here
The day he walked out
After the college was sold, Martin walked into a lecture and found studio lighting being taught out of a textbook by somebody with a master's degree in fine art who had never picked up a camera professionally.
He was contracted to stay four years. He resigned, and gave up the money, because he would not watch the blind lead the blind.
Everybody who has ever taught for him has been successful at the thing they were teaching, and has only ever taught that thing. It is the one rule he has never bent.
Ignorance is man's worst enemy
Martin's phrase, and the reason for the rule. What we do not know can do us real harm precisely while we believe we know it.
Which is why guests were vetted
In his college he brought in photographers from all over to share what they knew, on three conditions. They had to be successful at the thing itself. They could speak on their own discipline and nothing else. And they had to be willing to give their secrets away.
Academic qualifications never came into it. It was always about practical application.
And that is where the Creative Advisors come from
Nineteen artists who are good at the thing, who answer on their own discipline, and who give away what they know without being asked. The rule did not change, it simply grew up.
Meet themMartin calls this the gospel
Photography, art photography, fine art photography
Three words most people use interchangeably. They are not the same thing, and knowing which one you are reaching for changes everything about how you work. This is Martin's own distinction and he has been teaching it for thirty years.
Photography
Reality driven. It captures truth and beauty as they are, and does it honestly.
Art photography
The camera combined with handcrafted methods. Largely decorative, and made to be lived with.
Fine art photography
Expressive and emotive, made to be exhibited, and made to say something.
He has written it out in full
The whole argument, with examples, on the Academy blog.
Read the difference between the three
“Martin, I promise you one thing. It doesn’t come from wishing.”
Martin's father said that to him, and he has been repeating it ever since to everybody who tells him they wish they could take better photographs. The camera in the cupboard and the hard drive full of nearly good pictures are not a talent problem. They are a starting problem.
The proof, and we would rather you looked at it than took our word
Nineteen artists who arrived unsure of themselves
Every one of them finished the programme. Many have exhibited framed prints on a gallery wall. They are now the people answering questions in our community.
Meet the Creative AdvisorsIf you would rather just ask
Fifteen minutes with Martin
If you are weighing up where to start, or whether any of this is for you at all, that is worth a quarter of an hour of his time and he is glad to give it. No sales script, and no obligation.
Book fifteen minutesOr start with the free masterclass
An hour and a half with Martin on what actually separates a photograph from a piece of art, free, with nothing asked in return.
Watch the masterclassThere is an artist in everyone
We have watched it happen to a bored teenager who wandered into a lecture, to a doctor, to a retired environmental educator, and to nineteen people who now exhibit. It is not a slogan. It is simply what we have seen.
Start where they all startedGetting Started in Art Photography is where every one of them began.
