Becoming a great photographer

Let me start off by saying I don’t believe I’m a great photographer, I’m still a work in progress. That being said, I believe I’m a much better photographer than I was five years ago.

I recently read, well I’ll admit skimmed, an article about this topic (I did save it so I could go back and read it more thoroughly). One of the first things the author of the article suggested was to take photographs every day. As though practice makes perfect. He then went on to say that a 365 project was a good way. If you’re not familiar with a 365 project it is where you take a photograph every day for a year. I’ve tried this and they are difficult. It isn’t difficult to take a photograph every day what is often difficult is to take a quality photograph every day. I’m not sold on 365 projects.

I don’t disagree that to become a great photographer you must do something photographically every day. I just don’t know that it has to be taking an actual photograph every day. I mean would a cell phone photograph count as well? Probably for some of us. (Note: I’ve changed my stance on cell phone photographs but that may be a topic for a future ramble.) I think we can count on studying the photographs of others, reading about photography-related topics, and the basic study of things art and photography-related. It all builds towards our knowledge and skills as a photographer.

I haven’t done many photographs in the past couple of years. I have 404 photographs in my Lightroom catalog that were taken in 2021. So far, I have 126 photographs I have taken in 2022. I know that is a pathetic number, for 2022 especially since I took 93 of those at one photo session. My goal is to increase that number, dramatically and to work to ensure they are quality photographs. I can tell that I have become a bit rusty in some of my skills but I have honed other skills. My post-processing skills have improved. Now it is time to combine the two.

The bottom line is this. I don’t think we need to take a photograph every day, but I do believe we need to take photographs often. More than once a week, but we need to make sure all our skills keep up with our mechanics of taking an actual photograph. Let’s get out there and do some art making.