How long before you felt you "understood" photography

It's life-long journey and I don't want to 'understand' everything.
I guess life would be boring if and when we come to a phase when we 'know it all'.
 
I'll tell you why I can never understand photography.

Imagine this you have six pieces of twine. On each piece there are a hundreds of different parts of photograhy...

Now each part is just that, a part, it has to be combined with another part from another piece of twine. Maybe even two pieces to get an entirely different answer but each part on the twine can also be combined with many other bits for other pieces of twine to form equally important answers.


So the combination of variables is almost endless. Now image that every night some evil elf comes and rearrages the twine so that what you knew yesterday has changed. That's why I can never understand photography,

And Hertz even those lesser mortal among us have seen our bridal pictures butchered in the print media. I have seen beautiful full length become a chopped up head and shoulder to fit there f'n column space that day. Don't even want to discuss table top ads for catalogues.

Unfortunately I have had to suffer even more humiliation as I stood before a judge trying to explain photography in two hundred small words so I could be called an expert. I wanted to shout there are only a dozen experts and they are all dead. But alas the local PD would have frowned on that.
 
Perhaps we just need to continue to ask questions...

It's all we need in everything we do to stay interested to say the least. I mean if I finally get it, I'll stop shooting, there is no point, maybe I'll have a class to teach:mrgreen:

If you are not curious there's no point of doing what you do, unless it's for living...You just keep exploring!!
 
Or just hold up your end in a conversation with our own Hertz Van Rental... By the way Ryder Van Rental is the choice of terrorists two to one....

:lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao:

As wordy as I can get, (who me?) I can't hold a candle to the great Hertz.


:hail::hail::hail::hail::hail::hail::hail::hail::hail::hail::hail::hail::hail::hail::hail::hail:


I agree that for anything we care for and have passion for, we will never feel truly fulfilled. It is truly a lifelong endeavor.

A 35 year student of my art, and just barely surviving with a D-.:scratch:
 
I have been at it 30+ years (lots of pluses) and to the best of my thinking I believe I will understand photography about 30 minutes after I'm dead. The art of photography is and infinite learning process. In my heart of hearts there is only one guy that probably knows it all, and he ain't telling till I die.
 
I've had a few revelations lately. I used my old film camera today and realized how careless I've gotten with my digital. I rely too much on auto exposure and autofocus, plus the reassuring quick preview on the LCD screen. With film I take more time and am more deliberate. I think people call this digital habit spray-and-pray.

The second thing I've realized is that art says something. When I take pictures for just that -- taking pretty pictures -- they rarely (read: never) come out great. I need to want to say something or show something specific for an image to be good.
 
I really have to agree with everything that has been said.
 
The three very intelligent people I referred to above did not claim to understand photography...I don´t expect any of us are going to do better.

They did not claim they understood photography since their definition of understanding was different from those people who say they do understand. As simple as that.

By the way, I would go as far as saying: None of us will ever understand photography, since there is nothing to understand!

Not talking about handling your gear correctly in a technical sense, and not talking about some compilation of so-called "rules". You can understand some man-made concepts, I agree, but does that mean unerstanding photography? My answer to that is no.
 
I understood the nuts and bolts of photography very quickly. I still don't understand the art of photography very well. It has been 1/2 a century. Either I'm slow or will never learn it.

I'm slow too. I used to be a teachers assistant for a college photography class. I ran the lab four days a week and helped the students with assignments and answered questions. The teacher had them one hour a week.

Answering questions, makes me think and re-think.


So, how long did it take you guys to feel satisfied with your work?

Same as someone else. When I am, I'll go celebrate, but I'd probably just be fooling myself. :wink:

The more I learn the more I know how much I don't know. In some ways it's disappointing because I used to think I was so smart, and now 50 years later, I'm dumber than ever! :mrgreen:

Should anyone every be satisfied and feel they have reached their goal, or might we just keep trying to achieve more and more and never stop evolving and improving?

Some of my favorite pictures that I've taken are not that impressive. Some of my best technical photos aren't very artistic. Pictures I took years ago that I thought were pretty darn hot, now look like, Ho Hum, another snapshot.

On the other hand. I enjoy some of my photos and I don't care if anyone else does, because I do. And I guess that's enough to give me some satisfaction. If someone understands what it about and likes it, that's frosting on my cake. :hug::

Weekend of the 2nd and 3rd I took roughly 2000 photos. I don't know if I have two in there I like yet. 600 will get deleted right off. 700 will go into the save file, but just in case they have some historic content. 350 more will get dumped to the save file, when I start looking closer. Without going down the line further, I'll end up with 20 or less photos that I'll work on and see what I can do to post process them and refine them.

I found one I like for now, and I'm not sure about that one. :confused:

This isn't because I'm overly critical, it's because I'm shooting racing. I get loads of missed shots, out of focus, bad exposures, and other mistakes. Then there are the boring shots, boring composition and just plain boring. Sometimes you need to be in the right place at the right time to have something interesting. (oh that reminds me, update... two pictures that I might like)

Keep in mind why I do this. I'm having fun. I'm enjoying what I do. That's the prize and I'm happy!
 

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