Share the things that made you a better photographer.

Ill start:

-Learning to use manual mode and work with RAW files. Very overwhelming at first but this is very important for beginners. Eventually things will click together in your head once you soak up enough information. Just keep using that M mode. Maybe set one of camera features to auto to start with(for example set aperture and shutter speed to manual but leave ISO at auto for now. Later you can go full manual.)

-Instead of randomly shooting, imagining a shot in you head first. Work on it for days, get creative, frame it in your head. If you are not doing this anyway, you might not have enough motivation for photography.

-Learning to avoid distractions in photos(example things like bright objects that your eyes pick up first that dont add to the picture in any creative way. Also street poles, trash on the ground...)

-Learning to not waste time in harsh light. Id rather wait for good light than waste time trying to save a photo. Practice patience...

-Cameras are different. Learn the goods and bads of your camera body and use them to your advantage. Some cameras have a better dynamic range, better performance at high ISO but in the end remember.....if you nailed the exposure, it makes life a lot easier and all of a sudden ISO of 1200 doesn't look so noisy for example.

All very valuable advice and info.

I'd add this:

Make time to review photographs of others (as for example the many good and great ones in this forum). The more you look, the more you'll see. Just by osmosis, you'll begin to learn from them.

Don't be ashamed to try to emulate (i.e., copy) the style and the look of the ones you admire. Gradually you'll develop your own style, but it's not critical at first so don't worry about that. Concentrate on getting a good exposure first (or, if intentionally over- or under-exposed, recognize what you're doing and why).

V.V. Exposure, I've banged this drum before but I highly recommend the book Understanding Exposure, by Brian Peterson (widely available). I learned a lot from that book including how to use your camera in the Manual mode. But it has lots of great information.

Don't chase gadgets too much - get a good camera and a couple of good lenses and at least for awhile, stick with them, learn exactly how they work and what they do and don't do well.

The first big thing was when I got a SLR which let me see exactly what was going on the film. Bought a +10 close up filter from Spiritone which really boosted my involvement with the subject.
"Back when", everything was manual, so that made a big difference, too. No more having to have sunlight on the faces to get a "good" drug store print.

But what really opened my eyes was watching Mason Pollock work with light. Check this link out:
https://photography-on-the.net …showthread.php?​p=18544410

There used to be a website called PHOTOSIG. you could post photo's which then would be reviewed by other users and in return you would have to review other photo's.
Other than it becoming a disaster, the act of reviewing other peoples photo's made me a better photographer.

I got a great baseline start in high school with film and and inexpensive Chinon 35mm. Even when I was little though, my parents go me an Ansco 126 film camera at about 8 years of age. In my opinion having a great understanding of film photography before digital is a great advantage. Shots were carefully chosen when I used film.

Off the top:

• A family friend's gift of an old Rolleiflex Automat when I was about 12 (The "auto" part was film advance. Everything else manual.)
  
• Saving money to buy and use a light meter
  
• Learning printing tricks and enduring file processing
  
• Learning about the quality and quantity of light
  
• Learning, using and teaching Photoshop
  
• Art appreciation and photo contest judging
  
• Availability of great images on the net
  
• The excellence of modern gear
  

Great thread idea...

I'll add:

-I reached out to some friends who are photographers for help understanding things when I first started out. I'm more of a tactile learner so just reading about it doesn't stick in my head. Going out on a photo walk for an hour or so half a dozen times allowed me to take some huge strides in transferring what I saw in my head onto flash memory. Learn, then learn some more, then a bit more....

-Learn how to use your camera to it's fullest potential. I started out with a Rebel T3i. Used that for 3 years, found a limitation (fps speed) that was a real limiting factor in my favorite thing to shoot (at the time Motorsports), so I bought a used 7D and basically wore it out.

-Get out of your comfort zone with subject matter. Last year I started this and found it extremely helpful in expanding my view of things and finding features and capabilities of my gear that I didn't make use of in my 'comfort zone' but they now transfer nicely.

-Get out and shoot as much as possible. I have my iphonex with me most of the time and do lunch time photo walks and find things to shoot in new ways. I picked up a Canon M10 Mirrorless to take with me when my full kit is overkill so I can take more opportunities to take pics. I use the M10 on walks in the city. I have no excuse to not have a camera of some kind with me all the time.

-Always work a little bit here and there advancing your skills. I moved from Apple Aperture when they stopped developing it to the Adobe CC product suite - there was a learning curve and an opportunity to find new ways to achieve what was in my minds eye in my photos. I make it a point to learn a new technique on a regular basis. I picked up how to do layer masks in Photoshop and now I don' t know how i lived without that. Every month I get "Digital Camera" magazine and there's a Photoshop and/or Lightroom tutorial in there. I do them all regardless I am interested in the subject matter. I always pick up a widget of knowledge or info that is useful down the road.

Digital: Facilitated my entry into the hobby after decades of intimidated aversion.

Robert Capa: Having already consumed numerous magazines that proselytized the sacredness of sharpness, I was admiring one of Capa’s photos when I noticed that it wasn’t really sharp (NOT talking about the blurry D-Day shot). It helped to rearrange priorities.

Studying the “masters”

Studying other “amateurs”

Black & White Photography’s regular feature, “The Printer’s Art”, which had two photographers printing out one of the photographer’s original negative (or digital file). The results almost always revealed markedly different interpretations for better or worse. Which leads to…

Learning the importance and creative potential of post processing; that it wasn’t cheating!

Bryan Peterson’s Understanding Exposure

Grasping the fundamentals of the zone system.

Analyzing what made my photos suck (a perennial practice to be sure)

Discussions with other folks here on POTN

Accepting my inevitable derivativeness

Finding my style; OK, still looking, but I’m not whirling all over in generalism, which fits my style.

Film: Yes, it freakin’ slowed me down for the better, but more importantly, it intensified my overall joy of photography.

Constantly trying to see something that I failed to see the day before.

Looking at landscapes in terms of shapes and patterns rather than objects and sometimes ignoring the brightest, most colorful part of the sky if it doesn't fit a composition.

1. When digital came in and I was able to process images myself instead of messing about in a darkroom with B&W and paying $$$ for someone to process colour.

2. P.O.T.N.!

Art and composition books at the library made me a better photographer.

Having read every photography book the local library had in stock, I was learning a lot about the mechanics of the camera and chemistry of film and paper. Then I stumbled into the drawing/sketching, pastel and painting section where I discovered books regarding composition. I took up a pencil to paper and started sketching the wildlife as a I photographed and I was amazed at how much more observant one must be when drawing. I started observing how low the goose actually sat in the water, how far back their feet are to the body, and other details.

Rather than creating images with the camera, I was learning more about the parts that made up the whole animal and, as a result, became more actively observing nature, rather than passively seeing something, creating a few images and moving on. I was learning more about my subjects in greater detail and that has improved my photography today.

I've only been shooting photos for around four to five years, but this is what I've learned so far:

1. I'm not Ansel Adams or Henri Cartier Bresson; If I go two weeks without taking a photo I like, oh well. There's been times where I've walked for an hour, only took six photos and ended up not liking any of them. I'm not paid for my work so I don't stress if I'm in a creative rut or can't seem to take a photo I like.

2. Always carry a camera. No matter where I go, at minimum I bring my Ricoh GRii. Before that all I owned was a Canon 7D and for obvious reasons did not bring it everywhere with me. I started taking far more photos after purchasing a quality point-and-shoot and bringing it with me everywhere.

3. For my type of photography, I don't need a wide array of lenses. For my Olympus E-M5ii I own a 25mm f1.8, 17mm f1.8, and a 25mm f0.95. The 17mm is usually mounted and ready to use, the 25mm f1.8 is if I feel like using a slightly longer lens, and the 25mm f0.95 comes out only when the light is low. Having a ton of choices of focal lengths didn't help me get any shots and typically made me anxious when leaving the house with out one of them because "what if that lens would be perfect!". I've gotten by just fine since going down to those two focal lengths and my back and shoulders are much happier not carrying around a ton of lenses.

4. Using manual focus slows me down and helps me get better shots. When possible, I like to use manual focus because it slows me down and I typically notice things that I wouldn't normally see with auto focus. With autofocus I'm not looking through the VF for very long and I might miss objects creeping into the frame; by slowing down due to manually focusing, I see the scene for longer and notice more things.

5. Shoot manual and RAW always!

6. Get as much light in the file as possible (or ETTR). The shadow recovery of my Olympus isn't bad, but exposing the scene as bright as possible without losing detail in the highlights makes for much better quality. I have clipping warnings turned on through the viewfinder, so I just continuously up the exposure until red shows up, then I go up 2/3s of a stop and take the photo (The clipping warnings are for JPEGS but raw has about 2/3s-1 stop more detail in the highlights).

PJmak wrote in post #18627873
-Learning to not waste time in harsh light. Id rather wait for good light than waste time trying to save a photo.

Harsh light is usually ideal for infra-red modified cameras...

one of the things that made me a better photographer is getting a camera with a difficult user interface (1D MK II)
by comparison to my newer bodies, it forces me to slow down & think carefully about what combinations of buttons to push/set to get particular results, and I consider this a good thing!

Go placidly, amid the noise and haste. And remember what peace there may be in silence ...

Actually this is not entirely facetious, but Jay Maisel said it more succinctly. "Walk slow".

feedback made me a better photographer.

I was lucky enough to work with a few great photographers, who would happily rip my work to pieces, telling me how bad it was. Then tell me how they would have done it, and how to improve next time I went out.
very harsh criticism, but it was never malicious, If i got a great frame, they would be sure to let me know.
I actually miss working with them, but I don't miss the crap that came along with the job.