Is it Getting Better?

Two weeks ago, I suggested you stop asking if your photographs are good and that you not concern yourself with whether they are or are not art. I advocated a more playful approach guided by what you love and what brings you joy. I argued that the growth in your craft could be channelled by that love because the more you love doing something, the more you do it, and the more you learn. Or so I believe.

But that doesn’t remove the need for excellence in our evolution, nor does it mean we can’t all become more aware of our blind spots. We all have them, and many of us come through them faster because of a little tough love—a moment, perhaps, when someone looks at our work, sees what we do not, and gently nudges us in a stronger direction.  

I get a lot of emails. Many of them ask me the same thing: “Could you please look at my work and tell me if it’s any good?” I am very conscious in those moments of both the vulnerability required to ask someone this question and of the hurtful power of a misplaced word.

Too many artists, young in their craft if not in their years, have been derailed by the insensitivity of a more experienced photographer trying to hold the line in the cause of excellence. I hear about it happening all the time in camera clubs, but the same kind of comments have come from competition judges and the usual unsolicited comments from small-hearted people online. I try to be very careful with my words, but here’s the direction I try to steer those conversations:Before your work can be good, it must first become competent, and competence is a hard stage through which to pass, especially for those of us for whom patience is in short supply.

A better question than “Is it good?” is “Is it getting better?”

That’s a tough question that requires some thick skin if you’re going to hear the answer clearly enough to act on it. It’s also a question that will serve you well in your craft; it tells me you are open to change, that you know there’s room to grow, and that you’re more excited about where you’re going than where you’ve been. So when someone points out the sensor spots you didn’t see or the crooked horizon you didn’t notice, you think, “Fantastic; I can watch for those!” and take one step closer to competence.

 Much of competence is in paying attention. And growth in competence is learning what to pay attention to. 

The small things matter. You must pay enough attention to your work that you see the sensor spots. I know, we all miss one now and then, but when I see obvious sensor spots or crooked horizons, it tells me you’re not looking at the picture; you’re not seeing it. You might be looking at the subject, beautiful as it is, and you might be looking at your memory of the moment, but you aren’t looking at the picture. See what I mean?

It’s not about the spots. It’s about a lack of observation.

If I look at your picture and see a lack of critical sharpness, I stop looking for “good” because the competence isn’t there yet. I don’t mean some creative use of focus, like that slight motion blur you get that makes an image feel a little more alive, I mean the kind where you just blew your choice of shutter speed, or you missed the focus just enough to make me feel like my eyes can’t focus on an element that should be sharp. It’s blurry, plain and simple, and your pictures deserve better than that. You shouldn’t be showing your work at this stage; you should be learning from it.

When you’re chasing “good,” you shouldn’t still need someone to tell you it’s not in focus or that you’ve well and truly blown the exposure in critical areas. You probably shouldn’t need me to tell you to back off on the oversaturation slider, the white vignettes, or the choice to use (God help us) selective colour, but that one might be a different conversation. I’ve certainly made my own mistakes in matters of taste over the years before learning from them. Competence and taste are not the same thing, but the more competent I have become, the less I’ve needed the crutch I once found in the digital un-suck filters or the gimmicks on which so many rely instead of just learning the principles of craft, composition, and storytelling.

This all sounds so harsh, I know. I’ve tried to soften it as best as I can. But hang on a moment, and don’t get hurt by this. Competence is not a consolation prize; it’s your foundation—and you can’t bluff or shortcut your way through it.

Competence is the craft itself, and you can’t skip the craft just to “get to the good stuff.”

It’s like learning a language. Yes, once you’re fluent, you’ll be able to write poems, be creative, and play fast and loose with the vocabulary and grammar. But if you’re not there yet, the most unkind thing I could do is tell you that you are. Doing so would stop you from something truly good: getting better.

You can approach your craft playfully and still learn. You can make what you love and aspire to make work that is stronger still. The questions we ask matter. They drive our motivation and our behaviour, and you will be better served by questions that honour you and the craft you love more than they serve your ego.

“Am I becoming more competent, and is my work getting better?” These questions will take you so much further than “Is it good?”

Practically, this is a matter of what you chase: praise or growth. Happily, I think we can have both, though it will come from different people. Most of us have people in our lives who say things like, “Wow, this should be in National Geographic!” They mean well, though they haven’t seen an issue of NG in 20 years. This praise tells you someone resonated with your photograph, and that’s no small thing. You’re on the right path! Those voices can provide the fuel to keep going, but they aren’t the voices to listen to if you want to know how far down that path you really are, and what your next moves might be if you want to go further.

It is hard, but freeing, to be so honest with your work that you can ask where it lacks and what you can improve—and to truly welcome the answers—instead of the need for validation, which often creates (rather than allowing us to see past) the kind of blind spots that keep us from growing.

For the Love of the Photograph,
David.