[Fenwoodian]

.
Here's a touching video by my favorite YouTube photographer - Sean Tucker.

Mastery is a journey that sometimes takes a lifetime - it certainly has for me.
.

You Tube

You Tube

.

---

Last edited by Fenwoodian; 10-27-2018 at 12:31 PM.

[Wasp]

I agree whole-heartedly with this. I have been at it for more than three decades and I am still learning new things all the time!

[swanlefitte]

He raised good points and bolster them with stories from his life. I think his point was not mastering at all, he stopped lion rehab and priesthood. I think he talks about fulfilment only coming from a lifetime journey and mastery may be an outcome but can't be the goal.

[PJ1]

I rarely bother with You Tube clips but this was worthwhile. It didn't have to be about photography to make the point that mastery does not happen overnight. But I don't think I will ever have the time to invest to reach those standards.

[darylk]

Loved it. That is an inspirational life message, regardless of passion, profession or endeavor.

[monochrome]

In all things life is about the journey, not the destination.

[twilhelm]

Very good video. Thanks for sharing this, it was something of a reality check for what I'm currently endeavoring to do.

[kiwi_jono]

Excellent video!
I have been taking photos on & off casually for over 40 years and I have long ago given up expecting to become very good at it (especially with very full job, family and even other hobby commitments!) but the key points for me are:
1. I enjoy the process of taking photos (especially now I have slowed the process down a bit)
2. I get a buzz when I do take a photo I really like
3. I'm happy to see the improvements in my photos over time.

The other point for me, is how do you measure what a "successful photographer" is? Photography is so subjective, and I enjoy viewing photos in styles I like but I don't like everything (even if they are shot by someone really good).

[monochrome]

Excellent video!
I have been taking photos on & off casually for over 40 years and I have long ago given up expecting to become very good at it (especially with very full job, family and even other hobby commitments!) but the key points for me are:
1. I enjoy the process of taking photos (especially now I have slowed the process down a bit)
2. I get a buzz when I do take a photo I really like
3. I'm happy to see the improvements in my photos over time.

The other point for me, is how do you measure what a "successful photographer" is? Photography is so subjective, and I enjoy viewing photos in styles I like but I don't like everything (even if they are shot by someone really good).

I journal to document my improvements. I look around at where I am and try to learn things about it. I stopped envying other people their photos and just enjoy in the process - the moment - as you pointed put. I’ve started printing which makes me take my time and really TRY to make a worthy image. And I’ve made it my business to intentionally go out shooting, thinking of interesting places and light and times. But I do this for me and only for me, so success isn’t a consideration.

PP is still a chore, but it has to be done in order to print, so I try to be philosophical about it.

[kiwi_jono]

I journal to document my improvements. I look around at where I am and try to learn things about it. I stopped envying other people their photos and just enjoy in the process - the moment - as you pointed put. I’ve started printing which makes me take my time and really TRY to make a worthy image. And I’ve made it my business to intentionally go out shooting, thinking of interesting places and light and times. But I do this for me and only for me, so success isn’t a consideration.

PP is still a chore, but it has to be done in order to print, so I try to be philosophical about it.

Great points - I agree. I'm keen to get into a bit printing myself and thinking about getting a suitable printer (even though there are commercial alternatives) as it would motivate me to utilise the printer!

Until recently I found PP a bit of a chore but I'm actually starting to enjoy it a little bit now using Rawtherapee. A technical limitation for me at the moment is the lack of proper monitor colour calibration - I have 3 monitors and my photos look quite different on all 3! Had an old original Spyder but unfortunately have found its useless as it was designed for CRT monitors and I get very inconsistent results between LCD monitors.

[biz-engineer]

It's nice video, a bit of a shift towards the Japanese way of Kaizen!

[ffking]

PP is still a chore, but it has to be done in order to print, so I try to be philosophical about it.

Interesting - I love PP - film was so often disappointing in not being able to render things the way I saw them - always having to conceive film images in the way film would make them look rather than necessarily how I wanted them to look - and yes, I know that's a mixed blessing - it's such a powerful tool that it's easy to get horrible results -- but if you have a specific idea in mind when you make the exposure about how you want the image to look - even if that's simply as true as possible to life - then PP opens up so many more possibilities and involves fewer manipulations at the time of exposure. Mind you, I did shoot mostly transparency film.

[RobA_Oz]

Interesting - I love PP - film was so often disappointing in not being able to render things the way I saw them - always having to conceive film images in the way film would make them look rather than necessarily how I wanted them to look - and yes, I know that's a mixed blessing - it's such a powerful tool that it's easy to get horrible results -- but if you have a specific idea in mind when you make the exposure about how you want the image to look - even if that's simply as true as possible to life - then PP opens up so many more possibilities and involves fewer manipulations at the time of exposure. Mind you, I did shoot mostly transparency film.

Processing colour film, either negative or reversal, was always a finicky and fraught, not to mention expensive, activity for an amateur. The appearance of Cibachrome made that a little easier for reversal printing, but not cheaper.

I quite enjoyed darkroom work with monochrome printing, and I still miss it to some extent, but digital has made colour processing so much easier, and I quite enjoy it, except when I have a mass of images to deal with in a short space of time.

[monochrome]

Processing colour film, either negative or reversal, was always a finicky and fraught, not to mention expensive, activity for an amateur. The appearance of Cibachrome made that a little easier for reversal printing, but not cheaper.

I quite enjoyed darkroom work with monochrome printing, and I still miss it to some extent, but digital has made colour processing so much easier, and I quite enjoy it, except when I have a mass of images to deal with in a short space of time.

I think the ‘mass of images’ is my real problem, along with the complexity of the software. I lose patience and drive after a dozen files and it isn’t hard to have hundreds when trying to capture action.

I much prefer to measure the scene and fuss with the camera and the aperture and focus to fussing with sliders and commands and layers. Bringing up shadows and adjusting curves is about as far as I get before I get frustrated.

Of course I still choose to use more fully manual lenses than auto-anything lenses, so bending the light that hits the sensor to my will is part of the enjoyment and challenge. Since it is a hobby, not an avocation, I have had to decide to print to motivate myself to develop the RAWs.

.:

[automorphism]

I think the ‘mass of images’ is my real problem, along with the complexity of the software. I lose patience and drive after a dozen files and it isn’t hard to have hundreds when trying to capture action.

Personally, I've found that it helps to give myself a time limit going through shots and give star ratings. For images sequences of similar subjects, I make the rule that I only give one out of every two images a 2-star rating.

Then I filter out all one star images, and give one out of every two images a 3-star rating, etc. By the time I get to 4-stars, only 1 in 2^3=8 images are left, so even in a sequence of 200 images (say taken on a full day of nature hiking) there are only 25 left.

I've found that it takes only five minutes at most to go through such a process with around 200 images, so it's pretty quick because your mind should be pretty good at deciding amongst which two are better.