I’ve been thinking about two ideas that have stuck with me for a long time.

Practice over theory.

And self-criticism.

Both of those ideas apply almost perfectly to photography.

PRACTICE OVER THEORY

Everything sounds good in theory until you actually go out and do the thing.

You can watch all the photography videos you want.

You can read everything ever written by great photographers.

You can study their photographs.

You can learn composition.

You can learn the rules.

You can learn what you’re supposed to do.

But none of it replaces actually walking outside with a camera and making photographs.

You have to practice it.

That’s the only way.

Because eventually you have to take all that information and apply it to the real world.

And the real world isn’t theory.

It’s messy.

People move.

The light changes.

Something happens for half a second and disappears.

You react.

Sometimes you get it.

Most of the time you don’t.

Then you try again.

YOUR EXPERIENCE MATTERS

I think there’s also a danger in going too deep into the educational side of photography.

You can spend so much time studying other people’s work and other people’s ideas that your photography becomes based on their experiences instead of your own.

At some point you’ve got to stop studying and start doing.

Go outside.

Walk with the camera.

Make photographs.

Make bad photographs.

Make thousands of them.

Figure out what works for you.

That’s where your own experience starts taking over.

SELF-CRITICISM

The second big idea is self-criticism.

You’ve got to be able to critique your own work.

Not destroy yourself.

Not convince yourself that everything you make sucks.

Just be honest.

What are you doing well?

What aren’t you doing well?

What are you missing?

Where are you repeating yourself?

Because you’ll never improve if you can’t recognize your own shortcomings.

If you think everything you make is amazing, there’s nowhere to go.

You need enough confidence to keep making photographs, but enough self-awareness to know where you need work.

I NEED MORE MINIMAL PHOTOS

Here’s a perfect example.

I’ve got all my photographs backed up, and I regularly scroll through them.

Recently I noticed something.

I haven’t been making nearly enough minimal photographs.

A lot of my recent frames have been busy.

Not necessarily complex.

Just busy.

There’s a lot of stuff happening inside the frame.

And because my ultimate goal is putting these photographs into magazines, I want variety.

I need the busy photographs.

But I also need the quiet ones.

I need simple frames.

I need photographs that give your eyes somewhere to rest.

So when I went out today, I had that in the back of my mind.

Make something simple.

And now I’m looking at this scene.

I like it.

But I don’t want all these lines in there.

Maybe I simplify it.

Give it a little angle.

Oh yeah.

That’s better.

KEEP THE LOOP GOING

That’s what self-criticism can look like.

It doesn’t need to involve some enormous realization about your photography.

Sometimes it’s incredibly simple.

I looked at my recent work.

I noticed something was missing.

So I went outside and practiced making it.

That’s the loop.

Shoot.

Look at your work.

Be honest about it.

Figure out what’s missing.

Go back outside.

Practice.

Then look again.

Theory can give you ideas.

It can give you somewhere to start.

But eventually you’ve got to test everything for yourself.

Your photographs aren’t made while you’re watching YouTube.

They’re not made while you’re reading a photography book.

They’re made when you’re walking around with the camera trying things.

Practice.

Critique.

Adjust.

Repeat.

That’s how you figure it out.