About
The Osner School and Art Academy
A photography school that began in a Cape Town lecture room in 1993, moved online when it had to, and now teaches photographers in Europe, North America, Australia and beyond.
This page is the honest version. Who teaches here, how it came about, and where everything else in the Osner world sits, so you can find the part you actually came for.
How it came about
Thirty years of teaching this, in four steps
None of it was planned as an online school. It became one because of a pandemic, and then turned out to work better than the thing it replaced.
The National College of Photography
Martin co-founded it, and it became one of Southern Africa’s established photography institutions, teaching full time and part time students. It still runs today, under AdvTech’s Vega School.
His own school, in Hout Bay
A smaller, specialised school in Cape Town. For more than a decade it taught photography, art photography and fine art photography in the studio, alongside landscape masterclasses on location.
Everything moved online
The pandemic closed the studio, and the classes went onto Zoom as a stopgap. Students who had never been able to reach Cape Town started arriving from everywhere else instead.
Built properly, with Ralf in Germany
Martin and Ralf Armbrüster, based in Germany, built the Academy to serve those students properly. Self paced courses, a community app, class groups and mentorship. Ralf runs the systems and the onboarding.
The part that surprised him. Martin expected online teaching to be a poorer substitute. It was not. Work came back more refined than it had in the studio, because lessons broken into small pieces can be watched again, and a student who can rewind learns a technique properly rather than half remembering it.
Who teaches here
Martin Osner
Forty years behind a camera, more than twenty five of them teaching, and by his own account he has learned as much from the students as they have from him.
He co-founded a photography college, ran his own school for a decade, and moved the whole thing online in 2020 when he had no other choice. He is a working artist as well as a teacher, and the two feed each other.
“If you want to truly understand a subject, teach it.”
His view is that technique is the easy half. The harder and more interesting half is the creative process, which cannot be handed over in a lesson, only drawn out of somebody. That is what the fine art teaching is really for.
The artist side of him lives on his own site, where the paintings, the mixed media and the exhibitions are set out properly.
The other teacher here
Samantha Lee Osner
She was on her way to university. During a gap year she wandered into one of her father’s lectures because she had nothing better to do that afternoon, sat down, and never really got up again.
Afterwards she asked whether she could borrow a camera. She got the camera, then the tripod, and before long the Land Rover and the keys as well.
She took his landscape class three times over, then assisted on every one he taught. She did the fine art classes again and again, first as a student and then as his assistant. A spell in commercial work she found thoroughly uncomfortable taught her lighting faster than anything comfortable would have.
She teaches Photoshop for the Artist, co-leads the on location workshops, exhibits her own work, and runs the gallery alongside Martin.
The rest of it
There is more here than a school
Six things sit under the Osner name and people muddle them constantly, so here they are in one place with what each one actually does.
The Art Photography Academy
Where the online courses live, and where you enrol. Co-founded with Ralf Armbrüster and run from Germany and Cape Town between them.
Visit the AcademyOsner Gallery
The gallery in Hout Bay. Original paintings, mixed media and limited edition photography by Martin and Samantha, and whatever is currently on exhibition.
Visit the galleryOsner Framing
Thirty years of conservation framing in Hout Bay. Acid free mounts, UV glass, and every frame overseen by Martin himself.
See the framing workThe Atelier
Martin’s art and photography conversations, published on a Sunday. Free to join, and you hear them before they go public.
Join the AtelierThe YouTube channel
Over a million views of talks, techniques and arguments about what fine art photography actually is. Twenty three thousand subscribers, and nothing gated.
Watch on YouTubeMartin Osner, the artist
The paintings, the mixed media, the exhibitions and the collections. His own site is where that story is told properly.
Read about the artistWhere to start
If you came here to learn, the homepage sorts you out
“Creativity cannot be taught. It can only be guided, encouraged and nurtured.”
Martin Osner
There are four ways in, depending on where you actually are: new to photography, ready to push it further, moving into fine art, or wanting to come out on location with us.
Still weighing up a college against learning online? Where to learn photography compares all five routes, including the ones this school does not offer.