Breakthrough!

Earlier today I was looking at some pictures by someone who was just starting to take photographs. Her images showed a lot of promise but the composition was not quite right and there were some other problems. I am sure with the right approach she will be able to make better pictures fairly quickly. So I started thinking about what she could do to improve.

One of the main things is to get someone who is more experiecned than she is to look at her work and give constructive criticism. Choosing this person can be quite hard becasue he must be constructive. The wrong kind of criticism can hurt someone, particularly a beginner, very deeply. This kind of help is available in some camera clubs, though by no means all. Some web forums are also helpful, equally some are poisonous.

Looking at other people's work is also important. Sorry, not looking at other peole's work - studying it and working out why photos work and equally important, why they don't. This means looking at as many pictures as possible including those you don't really like. Looking at paintings is useful here.

When she has done this it is time to look at her own work critically. Hopefully she will have learned what makes a good image and be an the way to achieving it. She might even end up applying this process to images in the viewfinder before pressing the shutter - now wouldn't that be good! 
Copyright © Greg Wright 2005-8 Photography from Frome - All rights reserved
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