Review - Annie Leibovitz Masterclass

I'll keep this one pretty short as there's surprisingly little content to review here. Let me start by saying I've seen a few of these Masterclass series from a few different inspirational people that I'm a fan of. For the most part they're usually quite in depth and interesting. Unfortunately the same can't be said of this one. Even the title... Annie Leibovitz Teaches Photography, its simply not correct. There isn't even the slightest attempt at her teaching anything.

Instead what the Masterclass company seem to have done is filmed 90-120 minutes total content of Annie telling a few anecdotes about past shoots and people she's worked with. She adds is a few mentions about how she how she approaches very general topics like "Shooting Portraits" or "Creating Concepts" but these are very general overviews, never getting into any tangible or useful information.

If they called it "An Afternoon with Annie Leibovitz" this would probably have bothered me less, but they're marketing this as some form of tutorial which just isn't the case. I will say if you have an interest in Annie's work and want to watch her tell a few behind the scenes stories its probably worth a watch. In any case its not going to be a huge investment of your time.

That leads me to the other issue. It short, like very very short. There's 14 chapters, but most of which last 10 mins or less, the odd exception lasting 17 or 18 mins. One of the longer segments, the final section which is a case study shoot split into 2 separate videos so you could be forgiven for thinking this may contain some detailed or helpful information on that shoot. Unfortunately that's not the case. Its a good watch if you'd like to hear Annie talk about the mix tape she made to play during that shoot.

The second part of this case study is the post production video....surely she covers some useful stuff in this one right? I must be doing it wrong learning all these techniques to keep a wide skill set available to apply when needed. Apparently all I need to do is sit in the background and point at the screen with a cane while giving vague instructions to an actual retoucher who has skillset needed to execute vague directions I'm giving, because apparently thats what retouching means to Annie Leibovitz.

I should give some context here and say part of me isn't surprised. I'm not a massive fan of Annie and had heard a few times before that shes not a very skillful or technical photographer. Don't get me wrong theres a huge part of this stuff which doesn't require a technical skillset. In fact some of the most emotive, effective and highly regarded photography doesn't rely on just technical merits... but at her level there should be at least some degree of technical knowledge. Especially if the Masterclass company are throwing bucket loads of cash at you to produce an "Annie Leibowitz Teaches Photography" video. Then again I should have expected this as she is quite known leaning heavily on her team to do most of the skilled work involved in producing her photoshoots. In fact the only recent example I've seen of a shoot Annie did entirely on her own was a band from Northern Ireland that she shot a few years back, without a big production team. The results were shockingly bad, not just bad for Annie Leibovitz but if this was shot by a local photographer I'd have suggested asking for a refund.

I think the only reason this video came as any kind of surprise is that the content from other Masterclass videos is generally quite high. In the competitive world of photography tuition where you have companies like RGGEDU and Creativelive producing some really in depth and insightful tutorials, pulling in big names to give a detailed insight into their world, their approach and the skill sets they use to execute the shots they're so well known for.... this manages to achieve basically none of that.

Unless you're an avid fan, my suggestion would be to avoid.