Take Your Best Shot

Foreword

There is a story that Pablo Picasso is reported to have once commented that photography isn’t an art, because anyone with a camera can take a photograph. With all due respect to Mr. Picasso, that’s like saying that anyone that owns a piano is a pianist.

Photography is an art form that relies heavily on equipment for its actualization, maybe more so than any other. This turns out to be both a blessing and a curse. Certainly today’s auto-everything digital wonder-cameras do indeed allow almost anyone to take a well-exposed, properly focused image. But whether the photograph has any artistic merit beyond being simply a record of what was in front of the camera at the moment the shutter was pressed, is totally reliant on the person that pressed the shutter.

That is what lies at the core of Take Your Photography to the Next Level. Not the equipment, (though the right equipment for the task is an important ingredient), and not necessarily any pre- or post-exposure techniques used, though these too are important. Rather, it is that almost ephemeral connection between art and craft that defines the level at which one practices photography.

Practice is indeed the right word, because as with any art or craft it is practice which informs excellence. There is a story that the virtuoso violinist Jascha Heifitz, still performing publicly in his 80’s, was visited in his hotel room during a tour. When the reporter entered the room he found Heifitz practicing, and asked why, after a half ...