Just passed my Photography exam — here's what actually helped

The 6-week timeline is almost exactly what my instructor recommended too. I'm currently at week 4 and feeling decent about the Photography material but Product Photography topics are still shaky. Did you find the practice tests here covered both subjects pretty thoroughly?

Congratulations!! This is so encouraging. Can I ask — how many practice tests did you take total before the real exam? I'm about 3 weeks out and trying to figure out how much more practice I need.

Thanks for this post — bookmarking it for motivation when I hit a wall during studying. The point about understanding reasoning over memorizing is huge. I started doing that recently and my practice test scores jumped about 12 points.

I also passed using a similar approach! The scenario-based questions are where most people struggle. One tip I'd add: read the entire question before looking at the answers. It sounds obvious but under exam pressure you start scanning for keywords and miss the nuance.

Ugh, I feel this post so much — I actually failed the first time around and had to regroup completely. My first attempt I just watched YouTube videos and figured my field experience would carry me, and yeah, that did not work. What changed for me was getting serious about practicing with actual timed questions. I found a photography practice test pdf and started printing them out to work through on paper, which sounds old school but it helped me spot exactly where my knowledge gaps were.

Second time I passed with a much better score. Honestly the biggest shift wasn't studying more, it was studying smarter — like actually reviewing why I got a question wrong instead of just moving on. If you failed once don't freak out, it doesn't mean you don't know your stuff. It usually just means the test format caught you off guard, and that's 100% fixable.