Hi trog, I'd say I have moved beyond the neophyte stage when I can look at a shot, pretty much know automatically how to frame, focus and expose it. Right now I'll look at a shot think to myself "a 6.7 fstop will give me the right DOF" dial in 6.7, check the DOF and find I was wrong and I need an 11 or 5.6 or what ever. Or I'll be doing a perspective shot and think to myself "foreground focus would work best here" but being unsure, take 3 shots with focus on foreground, mid ground and far away, and when opening the files after the shoot find that the mid or far focus shots worked better. I know that all of this kind of thing will come with practice and where I now take 50 or 100 shots, and get maybe 5 or 10 keepers, I'll be able to take 20 shots of the same subjects and get the same five or so keepers. (tho most likely I'll be more critical and what is a "keeper" today will be a "yucko" in the future
)At that point I'll consider myself a journeyman amateur rather than a neophyte amateur. I'm lucky in that I'm blessed with a decent eye for shape, form and color, now all I need is the experience of working with the technology. But it takes time and practice practice practice.
NaCl(it's a good thing I like to shoot!)H2O