[Sandy Hancock]

The 10,000 hours dictum only works if it is used in "deliberate" practice. Just snapping away won't get you there, ever.
Read a lot. Do courses. Find a professional in your area and offer to assist them.
Oh, I almost forgot! Take lots of photos mindfully and deliberately, and learn everything you can about location, light, composition, processing and of course equipment.

---

Last edited by Sandy Hancock; 02-19-2015 at 09:09 PM. Reason: typo

[clackers]

Dragonlord, like painters through the centuries honing their craft, you can imitate the masters' techniques ... for free!


Check out the DigitalRev Youtube series, where pros like Chase Jarvis have to do a shoot with a piece of crap. Often a broken piece of crap:

Youtu.be

Youtu.be

[wibbly]

Not to be offensive, but this is a pretty naive post.

If you want to become exceptionally good at something and your first idea is to ask the internet how to achieve this goal, you don't have much chance.

To become excellent at anything requires massive amounts of purposeful practice, self criticism, and usually tutelage by those with greater skill than you have.

[stevebrot]

What is 'fine art' photography?

I can't really say except that I know it when I see it.*


Steve

*Apologies to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.

[Michaelina2]

A good place to start... tons of excellent advice that can be applied to a wide variety of subjects... highly recommended...

https://www.udemy.com/streetphotography/?couponCode=NowOrNever

Cheers... M

[arnold]

One thing that I've learned, is that good composition is something that happens in the mind, long before a camera becomes part of the equation.

And good composition is behind the art of photography.

[MSL]

I am a firm believer that anyone can develop any skill to a professional level with the right practice and training.

Technically proficient - sure. But photography is about capturing something more just like any art form. On the rare occasions I enter one of the monthly contests here, I get frustrated because my "best" images get routinely ignored. But rightfully so because when I look at the images that are getting the attention, they are on a whole different level, and not just because they are sharp or well processed. Photography is as much about seeing what is there as what isn't there - it is all about capturing light, and light can do some weird and wonderful things.

So, where does that leave things? With lots of practice I agree that almost anyone can learn to take sharp, reasonably well composed photos of a professional caliber. But in addition to that, to be a really good, creative, emotional photographer you need to see the world through a different set of eyes. To the extent that I have any skill, I'd say it is more in seeing creative opportunities than necessarily capturing them. And since I have no time to shoot (and the -20C weather isn't helping me want to be outdoors), I'm lucky if I can even retain what little technical skill I have. But I have some sense of where I'd like to get to, so that when opportunities arise I can capture them. And it won't be with lenses that costs close to $1000 or the top of the line camera bodies. It will be done with whatever cheapo lens I have to hand, but that I've learned to make sing.

Enuff of a counter rant?

[Sandy Hancock]

Don't let anyone put you off. It can *all* be learned. What is needed is the time, the drive, the focus and the willingness to put in the *required* effort.

However, what is actually required is often not the same as one imagines.

[camerasup]

Not to be offensive, but this is a pretty naive post.

If you want to become exceptionally good at something and your first idea is to ask the internet how to achieve this goal, you don't have much chance.

To become excellent at anything requires massive amounts of purposeful practice, self criticism, and usually tutelage by those with greater skill than you have.

I don't find this post naive at all. It was well thought of and I like all the replies here too. Why can the pro shoot great or even better pictures with basic equipment? Because its simple/straight forward to use and quicker to master then that clunker dslr. A dslr becomes a unique and different camera with every new lense attached to it. Its clear why some pros really limit themselves to a single lens or camera for most of their photography for this very reason. Consumers will always need the latest and greatest to feed the monster within.

[wibbly]

The jist of the post was 'how do I become a professional photographer'

That's a bit naive... Isn't it?

[wildman]

What is 'fine art' photography?

"Art" is a lie that tells a truth.

[Digitalis]

Allow me to preface my statements with this:

i'm a 4th generation photogapher in my family and a professional studio photography instructor. I hardly ever had to work hard to produce a good image, I'm a at consistently high level with my photographic skills. I'm also also the only professional musician in my family. I admit I only have a bit of musical talent, but over the years of training I have learned to make it work harder than hell: Presently I'm studying under the tutelage of the principal flute and piccolo player in the Adelaide Symphony orchestra.

In a nutshell: I deal with a lot of talented individuals. I have a modicum of talent myself.

I'm a firm believer that talent = lots of practice. I don't think talent is something a person is born with.

People can be born with an inherent aptitude for certain things - perfect pitch for instance: it is something a person can be born with, and many musicians I know of have it. Statistically speaking, the percentage of musicians that have perfect pitch is so great it would be perverse to suggest it is just a coincidence.

I have practiced the flute since I was 12 years old - i'm 30 now, have I put in my 10,000 hours? yes, but there still are things I have difficulty with. The difference lies in not what you are practicing - it is how you practice.

I know it's a bit trite, but the adage that mastery of anything takes 10,000 hours has logic.

Again this only really applies to the majority of people. If someone has a real passion for something it isn't difficult for a person to master a subject in a fraction of that time. While the number of people who are capable of this kind of savantish "hyperfocus" is rare, it isn't impossible. I have come across students who my colleagues were shocked at how fast they learned things. As an instructor I love these kind of students, I have only encountered two of them but it is great to see when a person is really into a subject they want to strip it down, learn the mechanics of it, how everything works, so they can create the images they want to create.

but there is an element of creativity, call it "an eye for photography" or what ever you wish, that no matter how much you train, although you may learn technical skills, and be able to replicate the work of others, you will never, ever, necessarily have a creative eye that allows you to imagine something new.

I completely agree with this. You can teach students the rules of composition, you can teach them the most advanced photographic techniques. But if they don't have the drive to think creatively with the medium, all you have done is taught a person to take good photos - but they will never produce great photos. A parallel to this also exists with musicians - you can't teach musicality, I have heard many technically advanced players perform beautiful works in a perfectly boring way*, I have heard less technically gifted students perform works in a highly original and beautiful way.

*for once, it wasn't the composers fault.

[Swift1]

People can be born with an inherent aptitude for certain things - perfect pitch for instance: it is something a person can be born with, and many musicians I know of have it. Statistically speaking, the percentage of musicians that have perfect pitch is so great it would be perverse to suggest it is just a coincidence.

I have practiced the flute since I was 12 years old - i'm 30 now, have I put in my 10,000 hours? yes, but there still are things I have difficulty with. The difference lies in not what you are practicing - it is how you practice.

I agree with you that people can born with something like perfect pitch, and that some people can learn some things quicker and seemingly easier than others. I suppose that I take issue with the idea that being good at something is result of talent. Being truly good at doing anything creative is the result of lots of study, hard work, and dedication. It is also true that those things alone will not make you good at something. You do need an aptitude for learning whatever you're attempting to learn.
I really really wanted to be a guitarist for years. I took lessons, practiced all the time, read all kind of stuff, and I got to a point where I could play a few things well, knew some scales, could figure out most chords, but I really struggled and was far from good.
On the other hand, I started building houses when I was 14 and learned more (and faster) than anyone I knew. By the time I was 18 I was running jobsites, and at 22 I was running my own company and doing very complex structural design work.
So I agree that we can be born with an aptitude for learning so thing but not other things.
With photography, when I started I felt like a fish out of water for years. I don't think my current "success" (I wouldn't really call it success) is from so called talent, but is primarily from study, hard work, and dedication.
Also, with any form of art, you eventually need to find your own voice. There is a learning stage where you are speaking with others "voices", techniques that you've read about, styles you admire, etc. but you eventually need to find your own style and voice.

[Rondec]

I think the whole ten thousand hours thing is a bit of a red herring. Yes, most successful people have put in that amount of work, but plenty of unsuccessful people have done the same work and it didn't turn out for them. To succeed requires some mixture of talent, hard work and opportunity. I don't know how much of each goes into the average person's success, but certainly it is some of all three.

With regard to become a good photographer, I do think it is important to practice seeing the world around your. A book I really like for this is Picture Perfect Practice by Roberto Valenzuelo. He tries to break things down into specific things that developing photographers can "practice" in order to develop an eye. Things like framing and light are covered in his book.

The internet does tend to be very gear-centric, which was the point of Ming Thein's post. In the end, photography is about capturing images of the world around us. Most of us won't create great art. Maybe we just figure out how to make the folks we are shooting look their best, or capture what dawn or sunset looks like in Southern Indiana, but that's probably enough. Begin by copying the images you like on the internet and then start experimenting out of that box.

Good things will happen.

[Digitalis]

to succeed requires some mixture of talent, hard work and opportunity.

And most of all: Luck. Behind every success story there is always an amazing amount of luck involved, and the desire to take advantage of it.

I do think it is important to practice seeing the world around your. A book I really like for this is Picture Perfect Practice by Roberto Valenzuelo. He tries to break things down into specific things that developing photographers can "practice" in order to develop an eye.

The thing is I never learned from books, I made my own mistakes - A book can tell you how to load film in a Pentax 67II, but actually doing it is a different matter all together.