Personally, I agree with Ansel Adams and his concept of "pre-visualisation". A photo starts 'life' before one even picks up the camera, IMO.
One should pre-visualise for the day, or the shot/s, what sort of FoV (FL or FLs) one may need. The camera should be almost completely set for the intended purpose - i.e. the right lens, ISO, aperture, shutter speed, metering type, focussing method and the like. In many, if not most, situations, one can predict with considerable accuracy what all these settings should be, and which lens one is likely to need for the subject.
One should try to become 'competent' at these things IMHO. Being competent means that there is a very high chance of any particular image being technically acceptable for any intended purpose. It also greatly increases one's keeper rate.
(This applies to 'ordinary photography', not macro/micro, sports, BiF and similar specialised subjects.)
By this I mean that all shots should be acceptable technically. Particularly, learn how your camera's metering and focusing systems function. The start of any decent photo is having the subject in focus and exposed as intended.
Almost all of the photos I took on this day below appear in this gallery, only one or two were marked as REJECT in Bridge:
https://www.canopuscomputing.com.au/zen2/CarsandSuch/AustralianCarShow/
Of these, only one has had any editing other than a small USM applied by my standard Photoshop macro that saves them as sRGB (I shoot aRGB), adds a frame and copyright and adds "_Ew" to the filename as a suffix. That shot of Jack Brabham's F1 car was straightened and had minor noise reduction applied. I do not recall deleting a single image in camera.
That is to say, almost 100% of the images I took are unedited OoC JPEGs, and all but one or two taken were kept and displayed in this album. Two of the ones uploaded have small technical faults, but were included for completeness. My keeper rate for this event was over 95%.
BTW, I'm not big noting myself here. At my first and only airshow, my keeper rate for planes in flight was no more than about 3-5% ...
This is what I mean by being competent. You must be familiar enough with your equipment and subject that you can lift the camera to eye, and shoot, capturing an image worth having almost every time.
Next comes composition of both form and colour.
This has always been the hardest part of photography for me. I started off lousy, and remained so until I started shooting digital some ~50 years later.
I made a couple of rules for myself:
1) Never crop, except where it is totally unavoidable; and
2) Photograph what I am
seeing, not what I am
looking at.
According to my wife and her artist friends, my photography has improved dramatically over the ensuing years.
Books such as those by Freeman Patterson "Photography and the Art of Seeing", Michael Freeman "The Photographers Eye", Biver, Fuqua et.al. "Light Science and Magic", among others have informed and inspired me, as have many "picture books" by different photographers.
Bruce Postle said to me when I asked him about how many shots he took to get his "winner" shots, he replied "Just one". He wasn't boasting, and I found that very inspiring.
These are the things that I believe make one a competent photographer.
Creativity is another thing altogether.
While admitting to having little of the latter by nature, I believe that my search for competence in the technical aspects, and concentrating on composition of form and colour have both made me slightly more creative in how I look at things, including the form, light and framing.
Note that I have not mentioned a single item of gear ...
Obviously, using a 7-14 lens for BiF photos is a fool's errand, as is using a long telephoto lens for micro photography. Of course there are always some exceptions, but these are rare, and detract from my main premise.
Some of the best photos I have ever taken were taken with my most humble kit.
Note also, that I have made no reference to
post processing. This is because no amount of PP will make a lousy shot into a winner. I have found that careful PP can lift a photo about one 'grade' - i.e. from lousy to acceptable, from acceptable to good, from good to very nice, from very nice to excellent, from excellent to winner. No amount of PP will lift an image more than about one grade, IME.
One rule I have about PP is that if anyone can tell that I have touched a photo (edited it), I have gone too far ...
(This self-evidently does not apply to photography presented as "artistic" rather than as "representational". There is a relatively distinct boundary between these two outcomes. I am mostly a representational photographer.)
A really good book on PP is "Scott Kelby's Seven Point System for Adobe Photoshop". It is the only one of his books that held any attraction to me. Familiarity with one's PP software of choice is pretty important ...
All of this is relatively straightforward. If anyone puts this into practice, one's keeper rate should improve.
However, if photography were simple, why would most of us bother with it? Like golf, the rules are pretty simple, it's getting the little round thing in the hole that's the hard part!
I'm getting tired now, and have a Doctor's appointment. I hope that these ramblings help someone, somewhere, become just a little better.
