If you are reading articles on Fstoppers, it’s a sure sign that you want to improve your photography. You have the potential to become fabulous, and there are proven steps you can take to help you on that journey.
I struggled with the title of this article. I started by using the word “great,” but greatness might suggest historical importance and maybe fame, and that’s not what I meant. Likewise, “successful” can be ambiguous, as it can refer to financial success, popularity, as well as producing superb images, and the first two are a byproduct of the last. So, I settled on “more fabulous,” hoping you will understand that it is about the quest to take ever more compelling images.
What Makes a Good Photograph?
Most experienced photographers recognize good images, whether or not they are to our taste. Creating powerful and absorbing photographs is a challenge, and there is a journey we must travel to elevate our most recent photos above our previous work.
A good photo does need a high degree of technical skill. However, it is lifted to the next level by its artistic qualities. Beyond those factors, the photographer must show an ability to communicate their distinctive message and feelings. Such photographs, of course, require the viewer to have the ability to understand that; an uneducated viewer might appreciate a pretty picture but probably won’t necessarily recognize the factors that elevate a photo above others.
How to Take the Photographer’s Journey
Many photographers start with no clear objective of where they want to be. Consequently, they shoot randomly and don’t learn from their successes and failures. Many get stuck and never progress beyond this point. But there’s so much more to taking a photo than picking up a camera and pressing the shutter button.
Successful photographers follow a steady progression throughout their careers. It is the same as with any other skill—improvement requires both planning and practice. So, setting goals is important. If you don’t have an achievable destination, you could end up anywhere. Moreover, those goals must be specific and realistic. Perhaps you want to win photographic competitions or have a photo appear in a magazine. Maybe you want to earn your living from photography. Or, it's possible that you will be satisfied when your images are good enough to hang on your living room wall. It's your goal, not anyone else's.
The first step is usually technical knowledge. This is where they get to grips with the rudiments of the camera. It starts with learning about light, metering, exposure, focusing, depth of field, stopping and showing movement, and basic composition.
From there, photographers often start to experiment with different techniques. They may discover their favorite genre and play with ways of exploring it. They will feel deeply enthusiastic about their creativity, which will begin to show in their results. Ultimately, when they go out with their camera, it will be to fulfill a desire to express their innermost feelings in their photos, and, if they are successful, those feelings will be recognized by others who view their art.
The photographer can only reach that stage after mastering the earlier levels. There’s no shortcut. It may take years, and many don’t get there. But the most determined and dedicated do. Like with anything in life, it's that journey of continuous improvement that is important.
Dream Realistically
I believe in people's ability to achieve their realistic dreams. Realistic is an important term. I enjoy playing the guitar and singing. However, it would not have been a realistic dream for me to become a rock star. If you heard me sing, you would understand why. Nonetheless, with all modesty, I can claim a modicum of success with my photography. I had a plan to get where I am now, and I know where I want to be and what I need to do to get there. If I can do that, you can too.
Planning for Success
By breaking down your goal into what I call waypoints, which are smaller and nearer targets, you can create a map to keep yourself on track.
Let’s say your goal is to get outstanding photos of the yellow-bellied sapsucker. You’ve had a lifelong ambition to see and photograph this amusingly named member of the woodpecker family. Your plan might start with attending a general photography course. You then take a specialist course on bird photography. On that course, you might discover you need better equipment, so you invest in a camera with bird detection and a fast long lens. You then learn how to get the best results from them.
You are also finding out everything you can about the yellow-bellied sapsucker, and concurrently, you practice photographing birds where you live. Then you travel to the mixed forests of the Northeast States or Canada and get your photos. Once you have got the perfect shot, you get home but feel you want more. So, you set a new target to photograph pied kingfishers, and then you create a new series of small goals to reach that aim.
Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends
Some people have a harder starting position. That might be financial restraints. Others might face challenges with their health. However, although it may seem easier if you start over halfway up the ladder, great photography often arises from hardship. Whatever your starting point, with perseverance and a little help from those prepared to give you support, you can achieve your goals.
Help is important for everyone. Building a support network by surrounding yourself with good people who inspire and help you is key to getting over any barriers set in your way. That means proving yourself to others through perseverance. People want to help those who help themselves.
Moreover, your mindset affects how you are perceived. Focusing positively on solutions rather than dwelling on problems will help you and make you the type of person others want to support. However, if you act like an ass, opportunities will pass you by.
It's Okay to Change Your Plan
The path to improving in photography is rarely a straight line. Therefore, it’s important to be flexible and willing to adjust your plan as new opportunities arise. For example, after your yellow-bellied sapsucker photo shoot, you plan to photograph those pied kingfishers in Tanzania. But then a chance to photograph leopards arises, and you aim for that instead. That's okay.
There will be obstacles along the way too. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic changed many photographers' plans, which led to many choosing a new path.
Accept Being Influenced
If you read the biography of almost any great photographer or artist, you will find their work was influenced by others. Studying other photographers will embed their images into your subconscious mind and make you more likely to work towards a style of your own that is impacted and shaped by their work.
Picasso once said, "Good artists copy, but great artists steal.” He went on to suggest that copying is a mediocre act. Meanwhile, stealing is bold and involves taking someone else's ideas and adopting them. That is often misinterpreted as meaning it is okay to plagiarize, and some say that the quote is counterintuitive, polarizing, and meaningless. That’s wrong. He was suggesting great artists learn from their predecessors and are inspired by their ideas. They adopt and adapt ideas into their work. That, after all, is what creativity is. It’s taking ideas and mixing them up with others to make something new.
What Happens When You Reach the Top?
There is no top. Those who do reach a goal never think they have done enough and always want to push even further.
There have been many variations of words first attributed to Socrates, whom Plato quoted as saying, “I know that I know nothing.” That statement underscores the importance of recognizing personal ignorance in the endless pursuit of knowledge. It embodies the idea that wisdom comes from acknowledging the limits of our understanding. Similarly, “The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know,” points to the same conclusion. So, continuous lifelong learning, curiosity, and openness to new knowledge and skills are all essential to becoming fabulous.
How You Can Become a Fabulous Photographer
If you are reading articles on Fstoppers, it’s a sure sign that you want to improve your photography. You have the potential to become fabulous, and there are steps you can take to help you on that journey. However, there is no shortcut to becoming a fabulous photographer. It takes perseverance and effort over time. If you love doing photography, then you will discover it's the journey that is fabulous and not the destination.
Becoming a photographer more to your own liking, regardless of whether other people like your pictures or not, started for me with an obsession. From the beginning of buying my first digital camera, I was hooked on photography to the point that I couldn't help but analyze every picture I saw. That would include books, magazines, window graphics in stores, even the local newspaper. For those images that resonated with me, I'd wonder why. For those that I thought were awful, again I'd ask myself why, or what I'd have done differently. I'd notice how an image would make me feel and, again, ask why.
Thanks Ed.
Ivor,
Thank you for this thought provoking article, I really enjoyed reading it.
Thanks again Malcolm.
Article's interesting, however tree photographs would remain in the cutting room if i has taken them.
That's fair enough. All art and photography is subjective and it's cool with me is some people like them and others don't. They were shot in a storm with 90 mph gusts and I knew they wouldn't be to everyone's taste.
Thanks for the comment.
In my opinion, I think that these pictures would be more captivating if there were some sort of object in addition to the trees that was anchored and not moving. An old dilapidated house perhaps, or a human form concealed by a dark cloak. Something which might begin the story: "It was a dark and stormy night..."
Otherwise the lines and shapes are all there are to grab one's attention, and there's a delicate balance between good abstracts and bad photography. I avoid risking a perception of the latter.
Ivor,
This is the most satisfying article I have ever read here on Fstoppers. And I only say that after taking several minutes to think about it to make sure it is true.
There are so many things that you say here that hit home in a big way. Here is one of them, quoted below so that others reading these comments do not have to scroll back up to search for it:
"Let’s say your goal is to get outstanding photos of the yellow-bellied sapsucker. You’ve had a lifelong ambition to see and photograph this amusingly named member of the woodpecker family. Your plan might start with attending a general photography course. You then take a specialist course on bird photography. On that course, you might discover you need better equipment, so you invest in a camera with bird detection and a fast long lens. You then learn how to get the best results from them.
You are also finding out everything you can about the yellow-bellied sapsucker, and concurrently, you practice photographing birds where you live. Then you travel to the mixed forests of the Northeast States or Canada and get your photos. Once you have got the perfect shot, you get home but feel you want more. So, you set a new target to photograph pied kingfishers, and then you create a new series of small goals to reach that aim."
When I read that I thought, "He gets it! He actually understands exactly the thoughts and feelings that wildlife photographers have!" What a wonderful example you used, and articulated so well!
When I read the line, "once you get the perfect shot, you get home but feel you want more", I like your example of moving on to Kingfishers. But something else came to mind - one may want more Yellow-bellied Sapsucker photos. One may think that they got a perfect portrait of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker in its preferred habitat, but in the process they became infatuated with the species, and now they are thinking about other types of images that they want. Maybe they think of how amazing it would be to find a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker nest, and set up a place to photograph it from, such as a tree stand or atop a tall orchard ladder. And then go to the nest every day throughout the nest-building, incubation, hatchling, and fledging stages and photograph these phases of Yellow-bellied Sapsucker reproduction. Then after they take two months to do that the following spring, maybe they hear about a population of YBSS that has slightly different coloration or feeding habits, in another part of the country, and so they make plans to go to that area the following year to photograph a slightly different type of YBSS. And on and on it goes so that one could spend the next 10 or 15 years specializing in this one woodpecker species, and never run out of different ideas for different photos.
I have spent anywhere from 30 to 60 days each year, every year since 2008, photographing Whitetail Deer. One may think that after so many hundreds of days afield photographing this one species, that I would finally grow tired and bored and want to move on to something else. But the opposite is actually true. The more time I spend researching and photographing Whitetail Deer, the more I learn about them and their diversity of habitats and physical traits, and that makes me want to photograph them all the more!
I have photographed Whitetail Deer all across the United States, from Washington to Florida to Pennsylvania to Minnesota to Arizona to Colorado and many states in between. But I still have not photographed the Whitetail Deer in Fire Island, New York. Nor do I have photos of the Coues subspecies in southern Arizona that are good enough to satisfy me. Nor do I have photos of the Columbia subspecies. I have photographed true albino deer, but would like many more photos of these very rare recessive-gene variants. And I have barely photographed any piebald deer, even though I think they are the most beautiful variation of all, so I need to spend a couple decades tracking down piebald individuals and trying to get super high quality photos of them, preferably of fully mature bucks during the peak of the rut when they are at their very best. And I still need to go back to the Florida panhandle to get many better photos of the deer there on sandy beaches with palm trees in the background. And I need to get to the Florida Keys to photograph the Key Deer subspecies that I have never even seen before. And there is a really great looking buck somewhere in Texas that someone photographed and posted on Facebook, and I would love to spend a year or two in Texas trying to find him and photograph him before he dies of old age.
I could spend 10 or 20 lifetimes photographing just one species of mammal or bird, and never get tired of it and never run out of ideas for new and different photos of it. And there are like a thousand different species that I could get that interested in, just here in the U.S. Gunnison's Sage Grouse, Mountain Kingsnake, Gray Treefrog, Ruddy Ground-dove, Desert Bighorn Sheep, Green-winged Teal, Blue-spotted Salamander, Shiras Moose, Spruce Grouse, White-winged Crossbill, Kit Fox, Gray Fox, and on and on and on and on.
Thank you, Tom. Great comment as always.
Ivor, this article is an inspiring and thoughtful guide to the continuous journey of growth in photography. Your emphasis on perseverance, adaptability, and setting realistic goals resonates deeply. It is easy to get caught up in chasing immediate results, but true artistic evolution comes from an ongoing commitment to learning and refining one’s craft.
As a fashion and editorial photographer, I see this process unfold not only in my own work but also in the careers of models, designers, and other creatives. The best in the industry are those who remain students of their art, constantly experimenting, evolving, and pushing themselves beyond their comfort zones. The idea that "there is no top" is something I wholeheartedly agree with—every great photographer I admire is still seeking new ways to grow.
You mention the importance of influence and adaptation in developing a personal style. How do you think photographers can balance drawing inspiration from others while ensuring their work remains uniquely their own?
Paul Tocatlian
Kisau Photography
www.kisau.com
"How do you think photographers can balance drawing inspiration from others while ensuring their work remains uniquely their own?"
I doubt that there's an answer to that question, and trying to separate your work from all the things which have influenced your style seems to serve no particular purpose. In your photograph "Grace Behind The Fan," I suspect that the idea was formed in your mind from anywhere between one and countless other images of that type that you had seen before where the face is partially concealed by some object. However the work is uniquely your own because you orchestrated the lighting, pose, makeup, dress, background and probably a hundred other things that are lost on the casual viewer. Unless there's a doppelganger of this person dressed in the same clothes, the image is unique. Besides, is it more important to craft an extraordinary image that your client loves, or assign it a uniqueness score?
I really appreciate this take. Trying to separate an image from all the influences that shaped it feels impossible—and maybe even unnecessary.
Exactly. We should embrace the things that influence our images, not try to distance ourselves from them.
In my opinion, Paul.... correct on both counts.
It appears from your portfolio that you've been blessed with a great imagination. That should carry you a long ways.