Epic Edits and Your Weaknesses

Brian Auer over at Epic Edits Weblog has an interesting article today. One of his readers, photographer Neil Creek, asked him what he thought was his weakest area of photography. It seemed like a good question to me. More after the jump.



Mr. Auer broke his weaknesses into a technical weakness and an artistic weakness. I think that is generally how I'd describe my weaknesses as well. Please understand that I am a hyper-self-critical Virgo, so I don't think anything I do is ever really good enough. Thus, my first answer would probably be that I'm weak at everything. ;-) Looking a bit closer and distilling the issues down, there a couple of areas that I don't feel comfortable with right now.

Technically, I really am still learning how to use the camera, but let's not hold something so general against me for the purpose of this discussion. I would say my biggest technical weakness would be judging good light from bad light and using lighting to my advantage. By lighting I mean both natural and artificial sources such as flashes, strobes, modifiers, etc. Photography is all about the light. A good understanding of how light works, how it affects contrast, how it can change appearances and so on is vital to good photography. This is part of the learning process of photography. We need to become as conversant in understanding light and it's nuances as possible. I think my photograhy is just starting to get to the point of taking light into consideration, rather than simply copying the scene in front of the lens.

How will I work to improve this? Practice. Light is everywhere. I will try to observe how light reflects, refracts, highlights and shades the scenes that I photograph. I will try to extend that to observing the world around me even when I don't have a camera with me. Becoming more aware of light and it's intereactions in general should help improve my photography. Working with artificial lighting will require some additional equipment. I will try to get or improvise the equipment to work with artificial lighting.

Now what about my artistic weaknesses. There are a couple of things that I think I need to work on. The first being composition or perhaps more precisely graphic design. I come from a technical background and have little formal education in graphic techniques and design. Actually, a lot of us probably have very little formal education in this area as it is not a subject that is emphasised in our educational system. While I have learned to follow certain rules for techical issues in my careers, the artistic side of thought hasn't gotten as much exercise. How am I working to improve it? I have been reading some books on the subject in to better understand the building blocks of graphic image design. In addition to that, I try to think about what might be good compositional elements for a given photograph and apply the ideas presented in what I've read.

The other artistic area I need to work on is people. Many of my photographs are taken of landscapes, flowers, or even still lifes. Relatively few of my photographs are taken of people. The people that I am most comfortable photographing are of course my family. I am very hestitant to photograph strangers. Street photography looks like an interesting genre of photography, but when I'm out with my camera I have a very hard time pointing my camera at strangers. I don't like to intrude on people, and some people consider having their photograph taken very intrusive. I am also a fairly introspective person, and like to keep to myself. Approaching someone to ask permission to photograph them is also difficult for me. How will I work on changing this? That is probably going to be a bigger issue than the others. Indeed, it may be one that I don't improve at all. There are certainly enough other things that interest me photographically, that I still would have plenty of subjects available if I don't practice street photography. Maybe I could try wedding photography. That should give me a good kick in the gut to be more intereactive with people, eh?

In the end how would I improve any of my weakness? Practice, Education, and more Practice.

What do you think are your weakest areas?