It has been 3 years since I started my photography hobby. I had never thought I would have interest in artistic hobby. I have put quite a lot of effort in learning it. There are some aspects of my self-practicing in photography that can be related to acquiring new skill of other kind. Let me tell you some points I have noticed from my learning that could help you in developing your new skill.
It will be a lot easier if you start it with a purpose
What do you want to achieve by practicing the skill. There were many times that I started learning new thing just because I wanted to know what it was like. I would get bored of it pretty quick. Those subjects were interesting but I just didn’t have anything to drive me to keep learning.
In my photography practicing, I have a small and simple purpose that I want to capture the atmosphere of Thailand Premiere League so I could share it with my friends. I love the league, I love the players, I want to say to my friend “hey, I went to this game yesterday, it was really great”. The purpose keeps driving me to practice the photography skill so I could get the better shot of the players.
Learn the basics
I will get frustrated every times I see people ignoring fundamental basics and trying to jump to the end result as fast as possible. I once saw a programmer asking for help in creating a GUI application without knowing even how to pass object references. You have to find the right spot between going too fast on insufficient information and studying too much without getting anything done.
Photography is an art so there are not many hard and fast rules. But there are some fundamental facts that every photographers need to learn e.g. the relationship between F-stop, shutter speed and ISO. Good photographers pay a great deal of attention on these basic camera settings. They learn how the F-stop will affect the depth of field in the picture or how Shutter speed will affect the light coming into the camera. They don’t just naturally take a shot and expect the picture to come out as they have envisioned. Mastering basic skills is the strong foundation in achieving the better end result.
Have patience
You will definitely get struggling at some point. Have patience and stick around for a while. Who knows, you may eventually find a way to break that struggling and get finer result.
In the first years of my photography learning, there were many times that I didn’t really like the photo I took but I didn’t know how to improve it. I thought this might be as far as I could go. But I didn’t quit. I was still able to achieve the purpose of sharing the picture of the league with my friends. Some pictures were blur and under-exposed but at least they were still able to express the atmosphere of the competition.
I started reading more photography articles and blogs. I learned some simple but effective techniques. What was the main subject of the picture, what were things that drew the eyes and what were distractions. At some point I was able to capture some shot I was more satisfied. My work is at nowhere near the professional level but at least I can capture some pictures that I am not too embarrassed to show to my friend.
Keep Looking for improvement
One of the most interesting things I learned in photography is that good shot need various right conditions and photographers don’t always have control over them. Sometimes you are in the location that limits the view angle or sometimes the light is not right. Good photographers will be able to tell when to wait for the light in other periods of the day or where to get the better view of the subject. They know that the picture taken in the limited conditions will not get the most effective result. They keep asking themselves, “Would it be better to do this in a different way”.
Trying to find better ways to do things is a great way to learn. If you find it too complex to manipulate XML using DOM then you may want to try mapping your simple XML to JAXB object. If XML is too verbose for using with JavaScript then you may want to start looking at JSON. And if you like JSON, there are libraries that help you map JSON string to Java object on the server side just like mapping XML using JAXB. The willing to find ways to improve your work will gradually drive you to learn new tools and techniques.
Expand your skill
I started my photography hobby focusing in sporting event. Then I began developing the interest in street life photography. I don’t really quite sure why. I guess it is because I love reading and taking pictures of people on streets makes me feel like I am composing a scene of a short story. I like the mood of the picture style that encourages viewers to imagine the story behind the picture.
When you are persistent enough to learn a skill for a long while, you will naturally develop an interest in more than one area of the skill. The server side developers tend to develop interest in topics related to building large system e.g. concurrent programming, system integration or performance tuning. The hard part is in finding what areas that suit your character. You may not know it until you try it.
Exploring new areas will help you improve your overall skill e.g. the skill in using telephoto lens in sport photography helps me capture better isolated shot in street life style.
Passion doesn’t come naturally
Before I started this hoppy, I had not much to say about photography. I liked traveling but I was too lazy to carry a heavy camera and lens everywhere. Now I am one of those people who walk for hours with a huge equipment pack on the back. Sometimes, passion is not something that just suddenly happens to you out of thin air. You have to try it, develop it, go through some struggling moments and finally realize you are crazy about it.