For over a year now I have been making a big push to improve my photography. I have been reading about photography on a daily basis. And have been going to every free class, workshop, and lecture that I can find in my area. I have also been studying other people’s photography on various web sites.

I was out on a photo shoot with a friend a few weeks ago and he seen me taking one picture after another of the same thing, trying to get the particular look that I wanted the image to have of the subject. He made the comment that I really go overboard on trying to get an image just as I want it. I didn’t give his comment much thought at the time. And replied that I just enjoy experimenting around with my camera and trying to learn new things, which I do.

A few days ago, another friend invited me to look at her pictures on her website. Not one of her pictures were technically good pictures. Some of the pictures were slightly out of focus, in others the faces of the people in them were devoid of detail because they were blown away by camera flash. But what made her pictures good was that they were fun to look at. All of them were of people enjoying themselves.

After seeing her pictures, I though back to when I first got into photography way back when I was a kid. And I remembered what drew me into photography in the first place. The reason I got into photography was to capture and save memories of good times and to save memories of the people I knew. Somehow I have gotten away from that. And I realized that for a picture to be good, it has to be a picture that people like to look at or that it has to have some special meaning to myself. Trying to get the perfect picture of something uninteresting is not the way to go. Perhaps the only way for me to go forwards is to go backwards.