Friday Photography Tips #11 - Learn Through Experience
Practice Makes Perfect.
Approximately 16 years of my working life have been spent in the world of 'Learning & Development'. Whenever I got good at something in a job, I was always keen to see others have the same success, so it was natural fit for me. Sharing best practice and helping people avoid the pitfalls and dreadful errors I experienced, was almost a moral thing to do - but sometimes it can deny them the most powerful learning. They never get to say "I won't make that mistake again!".
It took me the longest time to transition from the 'show and tell' type approach (like a youtube video this works a lot of the time) to creating an environment where people could learn practically for themselves. Nowadays when I run a workshop I know the more we are actively doing, the more we are all learning. There is nothing more valuable than having the ability to make a mistake and truly understand the mechanics of something.
In a slight departure from my usual tips, this week my suggestion to you is to find a reason to make mistakes and learn from them. Create a project or goal to work towards and find a reason to regularly pick up that camera, to reinforce what you know or identify what you don't!
My less than spectacular first effort at photographing a fireworks display is a painfully effective metaphor. Quite a few of today's images are from a much earlier time in my photography adventures!
1. Personal Projects
The reason why I base so many of my tips around photographing children isn't just because of the many challenges it offers, but because it was an area of practice for me where I could see a demonstrable improvement in my skills. Each blurry photograph I took helped me understand the many circumstances that lead to this result.
Projects like '365' (one photo a day for a year) can be great for getting you active and creative (though the burden can sometimes undermine any technical learning). Having the final project printed is a wonderful experience and I would highly recommend this.
A 'Weekly Theme' can be great as it allows you to experiment in a way that's as focused or as loose as you want. One week might be 'Macro (Close-up) Photography' and is likely going to make you appreciate focus and depth-of-field more.... The next you might choose a word like 'Blue' and interpret this as being about colour or perhaps road signs with innuendo.
2. Be Your Own Critic
As you increase your photographic output, you increase the opportunity for learning. Take a critical eye to each photograph and ask yourself what is great about this and what could be better. Look for positives, they're important and always there. Your minimum fall back can be 'this was the day I managed to take some photos', small victories! This can often take more time than the photography itself, initially I found it useful to rate my photographs in Lightroom so I could compare my best and worst.
Above is the least inspiring photograph of Dublin city there has probably ever been, but it showed me I had a lot to learn about composition and capturing details that represent character.
Reviewing your own images will encourage you to put yourself in a position to get a better photograph. To capture a different perspective on a well covered topic or an event that is seldom seen. I'd lived near the coast of Ireland for 21 years but it wasn't until I was visiting my home country as a tourist that I first saw a boat being transported for repairs.
But you don't have to do all this alone...
3. Invite Constructive Feedback
Join instagram, sure that's easy. Link to your friends, add the right tags to an image and you'll have plenty of encouragement and constructive feedback roll in... maybe. As social media platforms increase there membership exponentially it can be hard to stand out from the crowd. Harder still to avoid the less than helpful views of those that want to feel superior. Like the image above of the stuntman on fire, social media can often feel like self-harm; but like a camera set to full-auto (as was the case in this photograph), lots of good can still come from it!
Focus on local or social groups of interest, you might have a photography club nearby or some friends who are as keen as you. It really doesn't matter who you're discussing your photography with because their perspective will nearly always offer you something new to think about. I would value an academic opinion as much as a layman's view, certainly if my aim is to ultimately sell a print.
The image above was taken about ten years ago in wonderful Newcastle, I had finished work for the day and set out to explore the city. At that time I had been learning to manually set exposure and was continuously frustrated that I couldn't capture as much details in the shadows as I could in the bright parts of the image. I was starting to understand dynamic range and the limitations of my camera, but I was also starting to appreciate the beauty of shadows in an image and the difference they made to the composition. This photograph went from feeling like a failure to one of the biggest moments of learning in my photography. These days I'm often chasing shadow more than light!
There is also something to be said for muscle memory, like riding a bike the more regularly you take photos the more natural techniques and practice becomes. When you feel like you've mastered a technique there will always be others to learn.
Happy Friday,
Tom
