One of the benefits of having been there and done that is that I can look back at my photography and realise all the different stages I have gone through to get where I am today. When I look at other photographers’ images, the same story repeats all over – just about everyone goes through the same stages. I have attempted to describe them:
- Beginner. Totally clueless about anything so you make all the mistakes and are blissfully unaware of them and think instead that you actually have some talent.
- You are starting to realise that your pictures are missing something, so you spend more time in the digital darkroom than taking pictures, trying to improve them. Experimentation with PS plugins to lift up your images.
- You get tired of the PS plugins and start to experiment with the camera instead. You go through all the usual gimmicks of moving the camera during exposure, zooming out during exposure, double exposures (if you’re using film) etc. You’re excited about the results, even if you settled with poor subjects in your enthusiasm to try the trick (although you don’t know this yourself, yet).
- You begin to realise that maybe you’re not nearly as good as you thought you were, and start working on your compositions instead. You buy a lot of filters in hopes that they are the key to good images.
- Finally reaching the advanced level. You know your camera and what you’re doing with it, all the photography jargon is making sense to you, and you start investing in better lenses to be able to concentrate on your favourite subject matter and style of photography. You throw away most of your filters and only keep the polarizer and ND because you’ve finally realised that these are the only ones you need. The only time you spend in post editing is fixing minor things like cloning off dust spots, and adjusting levels and saturation etc. The images that require more work are trashed. You look back your earlier work and want to trash all your old images, too.
- Expert level. Composition is second nature to you and you know how to control every aspect your image creation process.
- Trailblazer. You have finally discovered what your vision is and you are fully able to explore different styles. You no longer mimic others, but create new instead.
So where am I at the moment? Hopefully at level 6 but more realistically, between 5 and 6. In all likelihood, I will never get to 7 and let’s face it, most photographers never do. I would be overjoyed to reach 6.5. I am on the verge of realising my vision, now it’s just a matter of keeping at it and see what happens.