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You should steal from other photographers and here’s why

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There’s a famous saying that “good artists borrow, great artists steal”, attributed to Steve Jobs, Pablo Picasso or even T. S. Eliot, depending on who you ask. Obviously, we’re not talking about taking somebody else’s work and claiming as your own, but taking on elements of others concepts and ideas, being inspired by it and incorporating it into your own artistic philosophy and methodology.

There’s a wonderful video called Everything is a Remix by Kirby Ferguson that touches on this topic, too (and perhaps takes it a step further), but this video from photographer Chris Sale talks about it specifically as it applies to him and his landscape photography and how it can apply to you, too.

Five steps to evaluate your work and learn from your old photos

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How often do you look back at your old photos? If that’s not a habit for you – maybe it’s time to start doing it more often. You can learn a lot by evaluating the images that you already took, no matter if they were taken ages ago or within the last year or so. In his latest video, Toma Bonciu a.k.a. Photo Tom will give you five steps to guide you through this process of evaluation.

You should practice photography every single day… or should you?

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There are many good reasons to take photos every day. Many photographers agree that it will help you improve, and Toma Bonciu is one of them. In this video, he reveals why you should practice photography every single day. But I tend to disagree with this point of view, so I’ll also share some of my thoughts about it.

Impatient Patience…Keeping The Momentum While Learning the Ropes

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You know how you think about things around the edges, trying to formulate the thoughts into some kind of pattern that makes sense and can be challenged and won from various angles? You do?

Cool, then I’m not nuts. I do that all the time.

Recently I have been thinking about what I see as a disconnect between the level of competence beginning photographers have and their expectations.

We all know that the divide exists, but so often it is approached from a negative or insulting way… “Newbies! Killing the industry!” And that doesn’t work for me.

Not at all.

I am more concerned about people losing their dreams than the ‘health of the industry’. I really am.

10,000 hours will not make you a good photographer

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When Malcolm Gladwell wrote his book, “Outliers“,  he had a chapter devoted to the “10,000 hours” rule that intimated that it took 10,000 hours of practice to become good at something.

I think this single criterion has been mild to totally debunked already, and he has said that most who quote that are doing so out of the real context of it, but he was clearly making a statement regarding the absolute importance of practicing one’s skill.

What was fundamentally lacking in the oft-quoted “10,000 hours to achieve mastery” was the unforgiving truth that if you practice something incorrectly for 10,000 hours you will be a master at doing it incorrectly.

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