Assessing Your Photography Level III

by Steve Eshom

The final segment in this series was posted yesterday at Luminous Landscape.  In this last installment George Barr challenges the photographer address all levels of technical and aesthetic quality because as he says “…all photographers shoot at more than one level.  All one needs to do is look at your thumbnails or proof sheets to see that there is a clear variation in the skill applied to each image.” (emphasis added)

I couldn’t agree more.  Looking at my collection I see the full gamut of technical and aesthetic and on any given image I’d be happy if all the stars aligned and both technical and aesthetic were at a sufficient level that the image could be called ‘good’. 

What am I going to do to take my photography to the next level?  First I’m going to stay with what I consider a continuous learning process about the technical aspects of photography.  I will read George’s thoughts and continue to read various online resources.  Heck, I might have to consider a photography course since its been 23 years since the last one!

The one area I really want to change in my photos is to incorporate more emotion, add more of myself, and improve impact.  Unfortunately that isn’t as much book learning as it is study, practice and persistence.  This sort of a change won’t happen as fast a technical improvement, but I believe it is worth the long term commitment. 

As an aside, I reviewed some of my older photos this week and I have say that I’ve seen a change in terms of both a technical improvement and an aesthetic improvement.  As with everything, there is certainly more work to be accomplished though.

So, where does your photography stand and what are you going to do about it? 

This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 9:29 am and is filed under photo technique. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.