My #1 Tip For Improving Your Photography
There have been countless words written to improve your photography. Books, articles, blogs, and magazines. There’s advice a-plenty on getting the right gear for the right shoot. Finding the right technical settings. Editing. What film to use, what developing and scanning system. Where to store your photos.
There’s information a-plenty to improve your composition skills. The Rule of Thirds, The Fibonacci Spiral, Leading Lines. All super important advice. There are volumes on posing your model, using lighting correctly, and studio and outdoor settings.
Spend any longer than a microsecond on the internet looking at photography and you’ll hear a million different opinions on a million different camera systems, lenses, and associated gear.
So, how can one little article — a few minute read — contribute to the already amazing volume of work out there on improving your photography?
Let me break it down for you, and break a few hearts while I’m doing it.
This ain’t about gear. You won’t find ‘five hidden camera secrets that will rock your world’ here. This isn’t a ‘three secrets of composition that the professionals don’t want you to know!’. This isn’t about anything technical, creative or composition. No, it’s way more basic, and it will rock your world.
Do you know what some of the most popular YouTube videos on photography are? Photowalks, especially with POV (Point of View) video. A photographer walking around their city, country, or environment with a GoPro strapped to them, videoing the walk and walking through the shots.
Why might this be?
Because walking — especially slow walking — is one of the most powerful, inexpensive, most bestest things you can do to improve your photography today.
Many of us have known this already — the power of ‘pounding the pavement’. Science is just waking up to this fact. A recent study conducted at Stanford University asserted that people who walk (as opposed to sitting) have a 60% greater creative output. Now, I’m no numbers man. There are two things I’ve never understood — math and women. But 60% sounds like a massive increase in creative input.
Why is walking such a powerful tool?
I’ve long asserted that creativity is the practice of connection. Connection to our environment, those around us, and ourselves. Walking, in my estimation, brings that connection to life. It enhances that. When it’s just you, your camera, and your immediate surrounds — you’re immersed. It’s the macro and the micro. It’s the people, the colors, the textures, the weather. It’s everything you see around you. It doesn’t matter where you are — a city, the country, in a forest, at the beach — when it’s you and your camera and you’re pounding the pavement — that’s when wonderful things happen.
If lockdowns have taught us anything (and they’ve taught me plenty that I don’t want to share in this ole’ blog!), it’s that when you’re out going for a walk in your neighborhood, you notice things. The details. The circadian rhythms of life. The hum, the beat of the locale. And with it comes an immense appreciation for not just what’s in front of us, but an enhanced appreciation and love for everything outside of it.
Well, I’ve definitely gotten off-topic here!
All I can do, ultimately, is speak from my own personal experience. Your single greatest tip might be photographing when you’re high. It could be only shooting with one camera and one lens. Perhaps it’s a compensational tip or a way you find complementary colours — the advice is endless, beautiful and helpful. For me though — magic happens when I’m out for a walk with my camera.
I find my mind unwinds. Each step helps me unravel the tightness of everyday life. My eyes naturally start looking for composition. my trusty camera captures in a little rectangle what I’m seeing in my minds eye. That mind's eye just seems to open. It opens, when I’m away from my comfy chair. It opens when I’m away from my desk, when I’m out of the office when I’m out of my car. It opens when my feet are a-walkin’.
What is your greatest and best advice for improving your photography? What pearls of wisdom might you share to help inspire? Let me know!
