I Wasn’t Taking Bad Pictures, It Was Awful.

First things first: you NEED to start taking bad photos, lots of them. When I first got my camera I was snapping away like crazy, I took it with me everywhere and would spend hours in the garden just fiddling with it taking pictures of my pet chickens.

It went on the train to Uni with me, walks to the shop, evening strolls and the like, so I would snap away at anything. This was great, I wasn’t getting any good shots to share but I was enjoying my time with the camera and learning. I’ve been pretty stagnant the past few months considering being a student means having your forehead glued down to my desk, but in the times spent procrastinating from work, I eventually found myself reading more and more about photography. I was barely out with my camera, lost in theory, arguments and opinions.

In the end it was a case of not doing photography for myself first. I understand that sometimes, not taking the photo is just as important as taking the photo (that you should give your shots some consideration), but I someone turned the idea of only uploading your best to your blog/social networks with ‘don’t take any at all, if they won’t turn out good’.

That idea is CRAZY. I haven’t taken a single good photo, any photo that I do share on my social platforms was either A) post processed to make it look good or B) as a result of experimenting.

I KNEW that I was inexperienced and wouldn’t get a lot of keepers (but that’s NORMAL and EXPECTED), the fact of the matter is, no one began as an expert at anything. It all builds up from the bottom.

The aim shouldn’t be to take ‘bad’ pictures, but they’re part of the process of learning. I felt demotivated seeing other people’s work and it put me off, I saw a lot of people sharing some truly uninspiring photos but getting lots of ‘likes’ and comments of appraisal, and I thought: “I don’t want to end up like that either”, but the people sharing their naff photos are still TRYING and making an effort, which in turn pays off as experience.

Right now, I just want to take photos. No matter how bad they’ll turn out.