The BEST way to improve your photography
I recently came upon an interesting question, posed in the form of a poll, on a photography forum I frequent. The question was simple:
What would most improve your photography?
Taking more photographs
Spending more time looking at & critiquing photos you have already taken
Spending more time post-processing your photos
Looking at images by renowned photographers
Attending a workshop of a photographer you admire
Buying an additional piece of gear
I’ve been thinking about this question non-stop since it was posed, and of course anyone can further their abilities in any number of ways that work best for them. I’m not sure that any one piece of advice is a one-size-fits-all answer, but every bullet can be helpful at some stage.
The Four Stages of Mastery
It is widely accepted that there are 4 major stages when it comes to first learning and eventually mastering a skill. I’m going to borrow this excellent diagram from Clive Bryant:
Thanks Clive!
I love how simply this distills the process of honing a particular skill, and we all likely have at least one personal skill that we have graduated into Stage 4 over the course of our lives. I think we can also all relate to the struggles found inside Stage 1 and Stage 2…not knowing what you don’t know, and somehow worse, knowing exactly what you don’t know and fighting to keep the willpower to improve in the face of absolute mediocrity.
Now, I think it becomes obvious why there’s very little advice that would apply to all skill levels short of Stage 4…the closer you are to Stage 1, the more basic knowledge you need. As you progress, experience BECOMES firsthand knowledge, informed by more textbook-style truisms. It’s the way we blend what we learned in a book or class and what we learn for ourselves that informs our eventual personal style and ethos.
I will now do my best to provide the best advice I can for each stage, based solely on my data set of one, stretched over decades.
Stage 1
You are browsing the internet and have stumbled upon a photographer’s portfolio. You are wowed at the quality of their work. They shoot the same subjects you do, but with a stunning quality to them, something your cellphone has never delivered. You wonder if Capital-P Photography might be something for you.
The seed has been planted. You know that there might be something for you in Photography, but you have no idea what to do next. You have a friend that has what you think is a pretty expensive camera, but their pictures are nowhere near what you’re seeing here…are they just not that good? Is their gear inadequate? Are you going to have to take out a loan to get geared up? How long will it even take to GET good?
You have no clue what the answers might be, and have very little idea of how to even answer them. That doesn’t matter all that much, though, because there is only metric needed to know that you’ve got what it takes…does thinking about Photography make you feel excited?
If the answer is yes, the rest can work itself out in time.
Stage 1 starts with the initial inspiration to pick up a camera and ends the moment that camera arrives on your doorstep.
The most important things to learn in Stage 1 is if you feel a tug from Photography. If you do, you will need to set aside a not-insignificant amount of money for your first camera. It will be better to save some money and buy a clean used body and lens in case you later decide that you don’t have the time or proclivity after all. All you need to get started is a decent body from the last 10 years and a basic prime or kit zoom lens. This is the stage where possibilities seem endless…and the stage where consuming a large amount of photography from others can have value…you are seeing what styles and aesthetics exist, what appeals to you the most, and what can provide some semblance of direction and inspiration for your early stages of creation. There is something to be learned from every major photographer in the last 100 years.
Stage 2
You have just bought a camera after years of looking at photos online and admiring shots far beyond the capabilities of your cell phone. You are completely overwhelmed by the number of toggleable options in your camera’s menu…you don’t know the difference between any of the shooting modes…you have heard that you have to use complicated software to edit RAW files, so you retreat to shooting JPEGs on full auto mode, and you’re not impressed with the output of this camera and lens. You wonder what you’re missing compared to others…did you not buy a good enough gear? Were you just misinformed by people online that don’t know as much as they seemed to? Your photos are coming out too dark or too bright and you have no idea why. You regret this purchase entirely…it all seems too much to overcome.
Welcome to the jungle and congrats on your new camera! It’s Photography 101 time. It doesn’t matter what brand you bought, how good or bad your lens is, there is a baseline of knowledge you need to progress past the “full-auto JPEG” newbie of Stage 1.
First step: you’re going to buy Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. You’re going to read it until your eyeballs fall out. You’re going to re-read it until the concepts make complete sense. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, is more important than a fully functional understanding of how the exposure triangle works. It is the single concept that will allow you to pick up any camera in the future and be able to shoot confidently. It is the foundation on which this entire house is being built, so we want to make it as solid as possible.
Second step: you are going to read your camera manual from front cover to back cover, maybe twice. Most companies have extremely comprehensive manuals that do a great job of explaining the concepts behind certain settings. If you find any of these settings interesting, confusing, or just have further questions about them, notate those…there are likely a dozen good Youtube videos out there that explain what that function does, and the best of them will have visual examples of the function being enabled or disabled.
Stage 2 is about diving into the textbook knowledge compiled by all of those that have come before you. It’s more important right now to learn about generalized, universal truths of the photographic medium than any laser-focused idea or technique.
This is also the perfect stage to solicit feedback, as sometimes it’s not obvious if a photo hits the mark or is a dud when you are just learning the rules, so to speak. You must be extremely careful who you solicit this feedback from, however. A common blunder I see are amateurs somewhere between stage 1 and 2 all huddled up giving each other what they think is deep level, critical feedback, when in fact their own bodies of work would suggest that they wait well into their own stage 3 before offer their opinions. Many of these people use this method of chest-puffed feedback as a way to posture that they are farther along than they truly are, but they are doing both themselves and the subject of their malinformed critiques a massive disservice. This is the realm of Dunning-Krueger and is to be treaded very carefully if you want meaningful, earnest critique.
Stage 2 starts with the pursuit of generalized photography knowledge and ends when you have a working understanding of exposure and the controls/options of your particular camera. You also understand what makes a interesting composition and are not randomly pointing the camera at things and snapping away without intent.
The most important things to learn in Stage 2 are the differences between shooting modes (Manual, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Auto) and everything that goes into exposure (Aperture, Shutter speed, ISO sensitivity, and metering), and how different Autofocus modes work on your camera. You are also learning about traditional rules of composition. This is the stage of photography where an in-person class can be most useful, as having an experienced teacher or mentor present to quickly explain different ideas or camera settings can shave months off the progression to Stage 3.
Stage 3
You have been shooting with your camera for a while now. You no longer forget the difference between A, S, and M modes while in the field, though you do have to really focus on which settings to apply to each scene. You’ve decided that you are going to graduate from taking JPEG photos and start shooting RAW + JPEG, working on your post processing skills now that capturing images is coming more easily. You begin a totally new branch of research and knowledge acquisition, downloading trial after trial of every processing software out there. You ask for opinions and find that just as many people swear by Product A as they do by Product B. You are feeling super overwhelmed, staring at your bland, grey RAW file sitting in the middle of a sea of sliders and options you haven’t the slightest clue about.
Now is where the REAL fun begins. You are sensing that you are doing all the right things behind the camera, but your photos are still lacking that special sauce that brought you into Photography in the first place. This is a super critical inflection point for photographers. You either make it past this last big hump, or you settle into comfortable mediocrity, writing yourself off as someone that has “peaked” well below those that inspired them in the first place.
Now is the time to GRIND. Now is the time to put in your 10,000 hours.
There is no doubt that in general, an interesting subject trumps all…if the subject is arresting enough, the photo could be out of focus, blurred, or marred in some other technical way and the photo would be hailed as important and interesting…but those subjects are few and far between. For the more mundane subjects, it is the photographer’s job to tell the story of that subject in a way that is still interesting. Most often, we do this through a combination of mastering the exposure, isolating the interesting bits, and excluding the parts that don’t add anything to the narrative the photo carries.
Post processing takes this idea to the next level.
It allows us to further delineate those parts we deem important and those we find insignificant, to draw the eye to different parts of the scene, to keep the eye from wandering to those parts that are merely window dressing.
The best part about this phase is we are only limited by our drive and ambition. The amount of free lessons, documentation, and tutorials that exist are shocking. Once you pick which program you are going to use, it’s a matter of sinking your teeth into the vast pool of information available about that program and the workflows that can exist within it.
Outside of processing our photos, Stage 3 is where we start to play with conventions. We have spent all of Stage 2 consciously learning “best practices”. Now that we have put those into action, we can start to subvert norms, bending rules to fit our unique creative whims. This is where a personal style is truly born…an amalgamation of learning what has come before and melding it with what emerges from time spent in the field using our own artistic eyes to tell our own stories. Often, this is where a photographer will first be told that someone enjoys their “style”. That can be an immensely bouying comment, an affirmation that years of hard work are starting to take shape and that the seed that was planted in Stage 1 is now a fruit-bearing tree. We can finally take a step back and relax in the shade of this tree, seeing the vast gulf from where we started and where we’ve ended up.
Stage 3 starts with the technical competency of your camera and lenses and ends with the pursuit of the final major skill set of modern photography…post processing. A by-product that emerges is a distinct personal style.
The most important things to learn in Stage 3 are the full breadth of settings your camera offers you, how every small feature can add or detract from the final image, and realizing in which ways post processing can improve your final output. You will need to pick a post processing tool and dedicate a significant amount of time learning and mastering it. This is the stage where taking thousands upon thousands of pictures with your technical knowledge in place forces themes and styles to emerge from the artist inside of you. Sheer time and repetition are like a hammer to blade on the anvil…at the first strike, a nebulous, red hot idea might be present, but after 1000 strikes, a blade emerges, ready to be taken to the whetstone of post processing. This is a great time to revisit early works and approach them again with new post processing skills in hand. You are vigorously inspecting your catalog of work to form ideas about what resonates with you as an artist.
Stage 4
You are now able to grab any camera and confidently take photos of high quality. You are seeing the final, fully processed image in your mind’s eye while in the field. You understand how every tool you have at your disposal works and how each can lend advantages to realizing your vision. You “see” the real world as your camera sees it. You innately recognize the dynamic range of a scene, and you can immediately see a “bad” photo that doesn’t need to be taken if conditions aren’t right. You can seamlessly go into the field, capture the “canvas” that you know will work best, and quickly and efficiently extract the final image with skilled processing.
If you have made it to Stage 4, congrats…statistically speaking, not many people have in the history of folks picking up a camera. You have made it here through a combination of sheer will and innate artistic skill honed by what might have been decades of practice and refinement.
Stage 4 is where you should spend the bulk of your money in photography…there is little point in buying up lots of different gear if you do not possess the technical prowess to evaluate its usefulness to you.
My only suggestion for anyone in Stage 4 is that they continue to pick up their camera, stay on top of developments in the post processing software space, and begin printing your work to share with your friends. Take photos of things that are important to people and give prints of those things freely as gifts, the bigger the print the better. Donate your art to charity. Participate in events that provide photography to the disadvantaged. Do some good with the fruits of the orchard you have cultivated. And above all, if someone comes into your life with that Stage 1 seed firmly planted, impart a little bit of what you’ve learned into the next generation.
May you stay forever inspired.
-Scott