A place built for photographic artists to work in the company of others. Put your work up, hear the truth about it as you grow as an artist, attend a live Open Mic session once a month, and take part in the creative challenges. On your desk and in your pocket.
If you are taking one of the Art Photography Academy's courses, the first five months are already included.
Why people stay
This was said out loud on the last Open Mic, by a member, and you could feel the rest of the room recognising themselves in it. It is the most honest description of the problem anybody here has managed.
A course gives you the technique. Almost nobody struggles with the technique. What people struggle with is the Tuesday six weeks later when there is no reason to pick the camera up, and no one waiting to see what you made.
“If you don't have that deadline, everything else becomes more important, because some of your family don't really think what you do is important.”
Every day, not once a month
The Open Mic is the highlight of the month. The rest of the month is the reason our creative community stays, with twenty highly skilled creative advisors inside the Inspire Community posting and mentoring, answering questions and discussing fine art photography. An inspirational place that is never quiet.
The feed
Members post what they are making and other members say something useful back. Fine art and pure photography both, because the Advanced Photography students bring their work in here too.
The spotlight
The Academy pulls work out and explains what makes it good. Being chosen is a reason to keep posting, and reading one is an education whether or not the picture is yours.
Your circle first
Your class group is where the early attempts go. The Inspire Community is where you bring it once you have nailed it. Two rooms, two different purposes, one to experiment in and one to showcase in, so no artist in training is forced to show a first draft in public.
It is the thing that makes the first coffee of the day taste better. There is something new to look at, somebody has said something worth reading about it, and more often than not you put the cup down thinking I have got to try that.
Somewhere to go that is not Instagram or Facebook. The same reflex, a completely different result. You open it in a spare five minutes and instead of an algorithm, an advert and a scattering of hearts, there are people looking properly at photographs and saying what they actually see. There is no advertising in our feed, and there never will be.
In your pocket
Your courses, every Open Mic recording and the community itself, in one app for iPhone and Android. It is the difference between remembering to visit a website and being told, while the kettle boils, that somebody has replied to your photograph.
Everything works in a browser too. Most members end up using both.
And once a month, on an extraordinary Wednesday
Then the month steps up a gear. The same loop runs every time, none of it is complicated, and every part of it is there because the part before it was not enough on its own.
Step one
Ninety minutes, live, on a Wednesday evening. Martin and Samantha Lee answer whatever gets asked, hosted by Ralf, and there is often a guest speaker as well. Every session is recorded, so missing one costs you nothing.
Step two
In the last fifteen minutes the new creative challenge is revealed and the brief goes out as a document. It is never announced beforehand, and that is deliberate.
Step three
You have roughly four weeks. Most briefs push you somewhere you would not have chosen to go on your own, which is the whole reason they exist.
Step four
Not into the challenge, but into the Inspire Community feed. Not as a finished piece, but as an image still in progress, while you can still do something about it, guided by the community before your entry ever goes into the challenge.
This is the step most people skipStep five
Do I start again, do I refine what I am working on, or am I happy to commit this as my challenge entry? The power is in the journey, surrounded by like minded photographic artists.
Step six
Entries close a few days before the next session. Then the work is talked about openly, in front of everybody, and the next brief follows straight after.
Not a mock up
Three screens from inside the community as it stands today. The challenge sits in its own space, the brief is written out in full, and there is already a library of them waiting.
You accept the challenge in one click, and you can see who else has.
The brief is set out properly, with the thinking behind it, not a line in a post.
Thirteen monthly challenges already sit there, so you do not have to wait for the next brief to begin.
That is the tone of the creative challenges. It is not about competition, it is about mentorship. It is not about achieving, it is about learning to achieve. It is not about being judged, it is about growing together with other artists.
The challenge running now
Shoot through something, onto something, or past something. Choose a veil to put between your lens and your subject, glass, fabric, foliage, whatever you find that works. Made entirely in camera, with no editing, because this one is about where you decide to stand.
Every challenge comes with a written brief you can download and keep. What to do, what to think about, what to avoid, and the dates. Members print them.
Live sessions
All of them 19h00 to 20h30, GMT+2. Sixty minutes of questions, then fifteen minutes on the new brief. Every one is recorded and shared, so an awkward time zone is not a reason to stay out.
Themes are never published in advance. The brief is revealed on the night, and that is on purpose.
What actually gets asked
Nothing was screened beforehand. All three are creative advisors here, which tells you something on its own: the people who answer still turn up with questions of their own.
Asked by Engela Gobregts
How does an amateur photographer become a professional artist?
Find the niche that is actually yours, refine the portfolio until it is genuinely strong, write an artist statement you believe, and build an audience. Gallerists are lazy, they want to see that the work already has people standing behind it.
Answered by Martin Osner
Raised by David Schlosser
Where does failure fit into making art?
If you are not in a mindset to make mistakes, you are not in a mindset to learn. Samantha took it further and showed a piece where something went wrong in the making, and the accident is the reason it is beautiful.
Answered by Martin and Samantha Lee Osner
Asked by Lize du Plessis
What role does community play in sustaining a creative practice?
Somewhere you do not just get a thumbs up or a little heart, but proper engagement. And an honest one. If somebody cannot cope with the honesty, then this platform is not for them.
Answered by Martin Osner
Members get the full recording of every session, and the transcript with it.
The part that is different
“We also wanted to be an honest space. If somebody can't cope with the honesty, then our platform is not for them.”
Martin Osner
Inside the community, so a post gets a proper reply rather than silence and a scattering of hearts.
Not as a name on a sales page. They answer, and they say what they actually think.
Work is discussed, not marked. There is no leaderboard and there is no winner to be beaten.
The rooms inside
The community is not one long feed. It is laid out so that unfinished work, finished work and the sessions themselves each have their own place.
The day to day. Work in progress, questions, half formed ideas, and the place you post before you submit anything.
Where you accept the current challenge and upload your final entries. Kept separate from the main room on purpose.
Every session recorded and kept, along with the briefs, so you can go back to any of it.
An invitation
There are two ways. One of them is complimentary for five months when you sign up for a course. The other is standalone, without doing a course, on a monthly or a yearly subscription.
Inspire Community with any art photography class
Five months
Included, worth $145
Getting Started in Art Photography and Going Further in Art Photography both carry five months of the Inspire Community, while the Advanced Photography course and Photoshop for the Artist each carry three months. Nothing extra to pay and nothing to set up, it is simply there when you log in.
Look at the coursesInspire Community on its own
$29
A subscription of $29 a month, or $290 for the year, where you receive two months free
No course needed. Same sessions, same challenges, same people. If you already know how to make the work and what you are short of is a reason to keep making it, this is the one.
Join the Inspire CommunityStop your subscription whenever you like, but the door is never closed. You can always come back.
Before you ask
Then do not come live. Every session is recorded and posted for members, usually the next day, and a good number of members have never attended one in real time. You can also send your question in beforehand and it will be answered on the night.
No. Plenty of members read, watch and comment without ever submitting anything. The challenge is there for the month you want a push, and it waits quietly the rest of the time.
It is going to be talked about honestly, which is the point of the place, and it is done kindly. If honest feedback is not what you are after, this is not the right room, and we would rather say that now than take your money.
That is fine. The briefs are written so they work at any level, and the feedback meets you where you actually are rather than where somebody thinks you should be.
A course teaches you the technique. The community is what keeps you making things once the course is finished, which is the part almost everybody struggles with.
No. Everything works in a browser on a laptop or a tablet. The app simply means a reply reaches you instead of waiting until you next think to look, which is why most members end up with both.
Yes, any time, from your own account. No notice period, no phone call, no offer of three months half price to talk you out of it.
Join before then and you will hear it live with everybody else, and you will have the whole month to make something out of it.
Join for $29 a monthOr $290 for the year. Already taking one of the art photography courses? Your five months are included, just log in.
Get started today before this once in a lifetime opportunity expires.
