Take Your Best Shot

Epilogue

In the essays which comprise the bulk of this book, I have presented a number of ideas for making better images. In the last chapter I outlined a way to self-check your progress and suggested some specific tasks to help you improve based on first identifying your current level. Few of the suggestions are painless or fast and, in fact, many may take years to achieve.

Simply reading this book is not going to make anyone a better photographer. The information needs not only to be applied, it needs to be practiced. Even when you don’t have a camera in hand, you can be looking for angles and shapes, and noticing the characteristics of light and surface reflections, checking backgrounds, and looking for compositions. Hours could be spent just examining shadows. You could be applying for a job, for example, yet you could be checking out poses and expressions of your potential boss. Mind you, if you get up and hold a light meter to his chin, he may question your motivation, but you get the idea.

Perhaps, when you are watching Saturday afternoon football on the TV, can you pretend click the shutter at the moment of peak action? Even when watching movies I find myself looking at compositions. There are some very talented cinematographers/directors who could show us still photographers a thing or two about composition. When flipping through magazines, even the ads can show you things about light and composition.

Serious photography is a way of life. It can be both frustrating and ...