Visionaire reviews?

[Blaise Glendevon]

I have been hearing about the Visionaire classes for a couple of cycles, and read the curated reviews on the website. However, $L20,000 is a pretty hefty outlay for something based on curated reviews. Have any of you taken these classes? I'd like to hear about the syllabus - even if only in vague terms -positives AND the negatives, and whether or not you thought you got your money's worth.

(And, yes, I'm sure that there are free or less expensive resources out there to recreate the coursework. I've probably checked some of them out. The value for me would be instructor advice. So, if there are other SL courses with hands-on instructors, I'd love to hear about them as well.)

 

Thanks!

[Tamara Artis]

A friend of mine recently asked same thing and its hard to give reviews or opinions about these classes because each potential student has unique knowledge and history in photography, real life or second life. Without knowing your history and knowledge I don't really know in what way to answer you. I can tell you that they form groups of students who have same knowledge so that it doesn't happen that a complete noob feels bad because other students know much more, or that one person is bored because the rest of the class is learning the basics.

Exactly 3 years ago I was chosen to be in their first group of students and we all were established photographers/artists back then, we had our own client base, portfolios and a certain knowledge. Our classes were more like chatting and sharing experiences, I applied out of curiosity and am happy I did it. If I had more time to play SL I would go through all one more time. There are two teachers and both of them have real life experience and huge knowledge about photography, they also have guest teachers in each semester. Whatever you ask they will answer you and you will learn tons of tricks to help you master in-world photography (again, I am not sure are you new to SL photography or maybe you already know tons of things). You will also learn all the basics that make great (or bad) photography. 

The course is not easy because each class can last long time (they say 2 hours but often it happens that we forget about the time or speak about something really interesting and stay much longer), you are supposed to sit in front of your pc and follow - pay attention. That was hard for me sometimes because I have slight attention disorder and I prefer to "break" one long period of time into several shorter ones. You also have to organize your real life so that you can reserve enough time for the classes, in total I think the whole course lasts more than 2 months. Of course you can always go take a break in the middle of the class or skip one of them but, since you paid, you won't do that and miss something important That's the whole beauty and advantage because, if you are learning by yourself, you will save money of course, but it will take you much more time to find everything, weed out unnecessary info's and try all the things you are supposed to try. 

The price they ask for the whole semester is not much because they offer you real teaching, information and interaction, they create the opportunity for you to meet like minded people, to connect with artists like you, to find some new business partners, clients, whatever you can think of. It is not only sitting in front of your pc and listening the teacher speaks about the facts you can find online or in any photography related book.