To become a photography master isn’t to become famous— it is to master yourself, and to master your own photo-making process.
1. Confidence
Primo, you need to have confidence in your own photography.
That means, you don’t look over your left shoulder, and see whether people are nodding and applauding you.
No— it is having complete faith in yourself and your photography-making process, style, and direction.
2. Enthusiasm
You know you’re on the right path to mastering your own photography if you have enthusiasm, passion, and zest for your own photography.
Do you like your own pictures? Do you have fun shooting pictures? Are you still curious like a child— or visually curious like you did when you started photography?
3. Take your time
Don’t feel rushed. Think about your photography in decades. Not days, weeks, months, or years.
And certainly don’t worry about how many likes you got on your pictures today. That is the ultimate distraction for you to master your own photography.
Simple suggestion if you want to master your own photography: delete your social media accounts (if they distract you from thinking long-term).
4. Composition
To master photography, you must master your frame.
Your frame needs to become your slave.
You must have complete control over 100% of your frame. No cropping.
In practical terms, when you’re shooting, focus on the edges of your frame. If the edges of your frame look good, the inside of the frame will generally be well-composed.
5. Simple and dynamic
Another idea for making masterful pictures: make them SIMPLE and DYNAMIC.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, as Leonardo da Vinci once said. It is very hard to make a simple picture, without any superfluous clutter in the frame. To master your own photography, beat yourself with the simple stick. Seek to make your pictures as simple as possible.
Yet, you want your pictures to be DYNAMIC. That means pictures that have emotion, hand gestures, eye contact, diagonal composition, Dutch angle tilt. You need pictures with SEX and rock and roll. You don’t want your pictures to lull your viewer to sleep.
6. Make hard pictures
Shoot what scares you. The more you can face fear head-on, the thicker your photographic hide will harden.
More risk, more reward.
7. Learn from the masters
Lastly, have a great deal of gratitude to the master photographers who came before us.
I still have a great deal of gratitude to my teachers in photography— all the masters who have come before me. They have inspired me with their images and image-making philosophies.
Like Steve Jobs, I want to ADD ONTO THE LEGACY of all the photographers who have come from before me.
I never want to be called a master photographer— I only want to master photography for myself.
BE STRONG,
ERIC