With everything that’s happening around us lately, we’re having all sorts of events cancelled, and these events are lost opportunities to learn and network. It’s a shame and it’s a huge loss, but what can we do? If, like me, you were due to attend an event that has been cancelled over Coronavirus issues, there are other ways to continue learning.
Practice every day. Seriously, every day, all day. Whenever you see an opportunity, take it. I find that quite often the shots that end up performing best to an audience aren’t the ones I expected to, and aren’t the ones I’d planned prior. In fact, it’s normally the photos that were completely unplanned, that were completely spontaneous, are often the ones I end up liking the most, too.
While in isolation, quarantine, or simply stuck at home rather than at one of these cancelled events, there’s a great opportunity to learn in other ways, and practicing every day is one of these ways to learn.
Number one on my list is jumping onto KelbyOne.com to watch some courses. If you aren’t already a KelbyOne member, you can sign up for a Free membership and get access to 22 courses, or 800+ courses with the Pro membership.
If you want to enhance your skills in other ways, you could pick up a podcast. I’d start with He Shoots He Draws, Picturing Success, or Behind The Shot. There are tons of creative podcasts out there, and they’re well worth a listen if you want to get the creative juices flowing.
Top of the list is practice. They do say practice makes perfect, and it’s for good reason. Take every opportunity you can to get out and take photos, or to just take photos where you happen to be. We all have a camera on us most of the time, right on our phone. Taking this camera and shooting what we see is a great learning experience. One way to set a challenge is to simply stop somewhere and find five things to take a photo of, forcing yourself to be creative and find composition and subjects. Taking this up a step, we can then use Lightroom Mobile or another app to retouch the resulting image and get used to using the correction tools to deliver a result. All this comes out of nothing.
Team, make the most of the difficulties you face and create a positive from them. We face difficulties and demanding situations, and this period seems to be one of them at various degrees depending on where in the world you are. Hang in there, make the most of it – you got this.
Much love
Dave
