p.1 #1 · What would most improve your phiotography?
What would most improve your photography? If you wanted to make a decision to work on improving your photography, which of the above choices do you think would have the most impact?
It would also be very interesting to hear some details of how you have advanced in photography, how you have acquired skills that are important to you, and especially to hear about specifically what you would like to improve in your photography and how you might do it.
p.1 #2 · What would most improve your phiotography?
I think you missed an import option; to take photo workshops which (should) include getting critiques by others of your own photos, This is the one I would have picked.
p.1 #4 · What would most improve your phiotography?
To get better at most things is down to inspiration, perspiration, and feedback (ideally from those more experienced than you).
Classic example being my journey into bird photography -- inspiration was to get out in nature with other people during the pandemic and over the years chasing warblers, hummingbirds etc. I became technically much better at capturing them and that in turn created new inspiration to go out and do better at getting those rare birds or difficult shots I kept failing at. Seeing the awesome photos of those who've been doing it for decades was also inspiration to keep trying to improve.
Feedback of others is crucial though, and shaped my idea of what a good image actually is. It was fascinating to go through a set of photos with a friend, for example, and see how they react to or nitpick totally different things than I might focus on. Over the years such feedback has undoubtedly helped me refine my own personal style.
p.1 #5 · What would most improve your phiotography?
chiron wrote:
What would most improve your photography? If you wanted to make a decision to work on improving your photography, which of the above choices do you think would have the most impact?
It would also be very interesting to hear some details of how you have advanced in photography, how you have acquired skills that are important to you, and especially to hear about specifically what you would like to improve in your photography and how you might do it.
I think working on a project or two with focus, intensity, and actually completing them. This would help me greatly in developing a style, and learning to tell a cohesive story visually.
Now that I am retiring, and moving to Italy I have the perfect opportunity to do this. No more excuses for me!
p.1 #6 · What would most improve your phiotography?
1bwana1 wrote:
I think working on a project or two with focus, intensity, and actually completing them. This would help me greatly in developing a style, and learning to tell a cohesive story visually.
Now that I am retiring, and moving to Italy I the perfect opportunity to do this. No more excuses for me!
Well, maybe....
Congrats on your retirement and moving to Italy! I'm not jealous at all.
p.1 #7 · What would most improve your phiotography?
mcbroomf wrote:
I think you missed an import option; to take photo workshops which (should) include getting critiques by others of your own photos, This is the one I would have picked.
Yes, I thought of that but there could only be 5 choices, and I thought the workshop answer would be too obvious and too easy--it would drive out the more interesting and less obvious answers that people might otherwise give. But that would certainly be a useful thing for most of us to do. Just wouldn't add much as an answer in the poll.
Jul 30, 2025 at 11:54 AM
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p.1 #8 · What would most improve your phiotography?
I wanted an all the above option and I would also endorse what mcbroomf and 1bwana1 said as well as I have learned from both those strategies in the past. Although I think buying gear can help, I would rate it really low on this list of things you can do.
p.1 #9 · What would most improve your phiotography?
1bwana1 wrote:
I think working on a project or two with focus, intensity, and actually completing them. This would help me greatly in developing a style, and learning to tell a cohesive story visually.
Now that I am retiring, and moving to Italy I have the perfect opportunity to do this. No more excuses for me!
Well, maybe....
I think that is a great idea. In addition to documenting my grandchildren's lives, I have set myself a casual project of photographing inside my home, looking for details or moments of light, color, and form that are in some way appealing to me. The theme might be something like "ordinary beauty" or "everyday beauty". I do like a lot of what I have gotten, and the project does seem to sharpen my eye.
I sometimes wonder what HCB would have photographed if he had wandered with his camera through the spaces I have been.
p.1 #10 · What would most improve your phiotography?
I chose option 1. For me, as a full-time working father of two young kids, it's about time and opportunity to do photography. I've taken workshops, attended presentations, reviewed others' work, etc., but at the end of the day, it's about going out and shooting.
On the gear front, one thing that has helped me immensely is simplifying my kit when going out to shoot. I choose no more than two lenses, ideally, just one, which gives me intent and forces me to work with what I have. It's been a great process for me to get into a groove and not worry so much about the what if.
p.1 #11 · What would most improve your phiotography?
chiron wrote:
What would most improve your photography? If you wanted to make a decision to work on improving your photography, which of the above choices do you think would have the most impact?
One word: constraints.
Examples:
- One camera, one focal length.
- Contrainted volume, some people do "one photo per day" year, very much the opposite of taking more photographs.
- Stick to one genre.
- More focused version of it is stick to a theme. "The city of shadows" by Titarenko is my favorite example.
- Even more extrme: narrow choice of subjects. One famous example.
Walking around with a bag of 14-200mm focal lengths and looking for something to photograph never worked for me. TBH almost nothing worked for me, I guess I'm naturally not talented, until I tried shooting film some time ago. I only had a sigle 35mm lens film camera, and just 36 exposrues per week. I noticed an uptick in the quality of my images.
These days I started to shoot digital again, but I stay away from zooms, primarily rely on primes in the 24-85mm range, and usually work with just one focal length per session. I am a bit better than I had been prior to my film experiment, but started to plateau again. Need to find a new trick. Lately I've been focused on B&W flash-assisted daylight photography, primarily portraits.
p.1 #12 · What would most improve your phiotography?
Definitely learning more about and doing more post-processing, but that’s because I currently basically don’t do any of that.
Shooting more is right up there as well.
But part of me doesn’t know what it is I should be aiming for. I’m not a pro, I don’t need a ‘style’ other than what comes naturally. I also don’t need to satisfy anybody else, nor do I need to be consistent. I don’t know why we’re constantly told we need those things when they have absolutely nothing to do with the hobby of photography.
p.1 #13 · What would most improve your phiotography?
johnvanr wrote:
Definitely learning more about and doing more post-processing, but that’s because I currently basically don’t do any of that.
Shooting more is right up there as well.
But part of me doesn’t know what it is I should be aiming for. I’m not a pro, I don’t need a ‘style’ other than what comes naturally. I also don’t need to satisfy anybody else, nor do I need to be consistent. I don’t know why we’re constantly told we need those things when they have absolutely nothing to do with the hobby of photography.
You only need those things if you want to produce a cohesive and visually effective body of work for a project. That is a valid thing to do. Of course these still leaves plenty of room for freestyle outside the projects.
p.1 #14 · What would most improve your phiotography?
F8 and be there. It's that simple.
Not sure who said that (HCB I think) but the point I want to make is that quality images don't happen without effort and motivation, actually being out there and doing it, taking pictures. And not necessarily at F8!
p.1 #15 · What would most improve your phiotography?
JohnJ wrote:
F8 and be there. It's that simple.
Not sure who said that (HCB I think) but the point I want to make is that quality images don't happen without effoalthough rt and motivation, actually being out there and doing it, taking pictures. And not necessarily at F8!
In the context of this thread, the "be there" portion of the quotation from Arthur "Weegee" Fellig makes sense to me. To improve my photography I should to get out more with my camera (although perhaps not so much with an updated version of his Speed Graphic--which I suppose might be a full frame camera with a normalish lens at about f/2.8, but perhaps without the flash).
p.1 #16 · What would most improve your phiotography?
For me it was stepping back from the gear and having too many choices constantly making me feel unprepared. Or maybe not prepared properly would be a better way to phrase it.
This year I made a conscious decision to focus on one camera with a fixed lens for at least 95% of my photography. I put my A7CR and all my Sony lenses out of sight, and just focused on working with a single camera and lens option even if I would have previously thought the focal length wasn’t right, or I had better autofocus options, etc. It was frustrating at first seeing an eagle fighting a a group of crows, or a mountain range at sunset with epic light and only having a 43mm lens with me (for instance). But after a few months I learned to make do with what I have and slow down and relook for other ways to capture the moment/story.
By not constantly having this running dialogue in my head along the lines of “well this would be perfect if I had a different lens or body”, I was able to learn to see SO MUCH MORE when I was in that mindset of wanting to take a photo. It forced me to get creative and lean into the less is more ethos.
p.1 #17 · What would most improve your phiotography?
zugzwang2 wrote:
In the context of this thread, the "be there" portion of the quotation from Arthur "Weegee" Fellig makes sense to me. To improve my photography I should to get out more with my camera (although perhaps not so much with an updated version of his Speed Graphic--which I suppose might be a full frame camera with a normalish lens at about f/2.8, but perhaps without the flash).
finding the motivation to 'be there' can be the challenge.
So many of the impressive images I see are the result of commitment and effort, none of which happens just sitting in front of a computer/phone on forums or Facebook.
p.1 #18 · What would most improve your phiotography?
A few thoughts.
Firstly, most people would be best served by paying for an industry leading post processing program (the horror, apparently!) and spending 6 months deep diving into it. The learning is easy and free thanks to Youtube. It's exceedingly clear that many buy gear that they are not capable of leveraging to their full advantage and are under-processing their images. Hyperfocusing on Lightroom over the years has been a great investment personally, and keeping up to speed on all the new features as they emerge makes it easier to digest bite by bite vs trying to catch up all at once. Now, even extremely complex edits are just second nature, and I can fly through something that would have taken me multiple days in years past in perhaps half an hour.
Secondly, I have never particularly understood the desire to glom onto a specific teacher or mentor in terms of workshops. I have seen MANY people try to emulate a photographer that they find particularly inspiring while not understanding a lick about what MAKES the work so inspiring, and their own copy-cat work emerges as a clear imitation of something much better. This isn't to say that having aspirational figures is a total negative, but I find that many people take the path of least resistance of simply copying bar for bar instead of learning how to feel your way through the artistic process for themselves.
For me, my best work appears suddenly and often surprisingly when I am out and about with a camera...imagine that! Years of preparation (learning how to post process and developing a personal style all my own) meeting a fleeting moment of inspiration often leads to a nearly effortless dance in the field. Having gear that I'm super familiar with and don't have to fiddle with in the middle of that dance removes friction, and the "final" processed image appears to me in my mind's eye over the top of what I'm capturing in RAW form.
This is a synergy that has become more automatic with every year that I continue down a sometimes monotonous road of staying on top of PP technology and software developments and improvements. It has made it much easier to enable me to convey a the exact "mood" I feel in that moment, and by extension, have my photography tell the story I want it to.
That's a long way of saying that getting my ass out there and sitting my ass behind my monitor and putting in the 10,000 hours has been a bullet proof method for my own personal improvement. Any information you need to know is at your fingertips for free. The are no excuses if you dedicate yourself to the process.
p.1 #19 · What would most improve your phiotography?
Me personally, I have to be inspired when out and about. Making sense of a complex scene, for example. It's more of a philosophical approach, but if a situation feels "forced", I will have a hard time connecting. A good read is Galen Rowell's "Inner Game of Outdoor Photography".
A few years ago I had to take time off of work for several months, and traveled 1000s of miles, and found I drove more miles than photos taken.
Also as someone suggested prior, less options in lens selection can really dial in the creative style. Im now just getting back into just opening files from 2023 that I have never looked at, and gonna get some gear again. Sold everything I had years ago. All I need is an A7r4, 70-200 GMII and 200-600 and maybe a TC and see what happens. Im moving back to Utah from TN in February, so figure it out might as check out the Blue Ridge Parkway before I go.
p.1 #20 · What would most improve your phiotography?
The question "What would most improve your photography?" is asked as a personal question. My guess is that most FMers tend to do one-two genres of photography, e.g. landscapes, or portraits, or street, etc. The absolute majority likely do wildlife photography, particularly birds.
Some of these genres are more challenging in different ways than the others.
I picked the last choice (basically buying more gear), because of a personal interest in the advantages and special capabilities of cropped-sensor, full frame, and medium format systems for different genres of photography. For example, my impression is that OM-1 II with the 90mm f3.5 macro lens might be the best system for macro. A medium format system might be the best for landscapes. A FF system with a lens like 50mm F1.2 might or 35mm F1.2 to F1.4 might be ideal for environmental portraits, etc.
The importance of learning through doing more photography, learning from others, perfecting post-processing skills is obvious. It kind of goes without saying.
