Advice: Syl Arena's 'Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School'

Syl Arena has a great continuing series of posts on his site called "Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School", which I find to be quite insightful and inspiring. Here are a few of my favorites from the series:

18. Make tons of mistakes and fail frequently.
If you don’t make a lot of photographs that you didn’t intend, then you’re not working hard enough or, maybe, you’re working too hard. Either way, one of the gateways to being truly successful is not being afraid of failure. A friend laughed at me long ago and said “Syl, you won’t make that mistake again. You’ll make a new and bigger mistake.” I’ve been practicing this mantra for years. Much of my creative growth has emerged from the ashes of my efforts. Study your “mistakes” and use them to expand your vision and understanding of photography life.

I've always been afraid of failure, rejection, but I'm slowly learning not to dwell on those failures, not to let those failures loom over me, and just learn my lessons and move forward.

27. Ultimately your career as a photographer, amateur or professional, will be defined by the lives you touch through the images you make.
And chances are good that you’ll never know the final score on your report card.

This may sound shallow, but I've always found it greatly rewarding when I see poeple using portraits I've taken of them as their avatar/profile/primary picture in Facebook/Friendster/Multiply. I guess because I feel that I've been able to capture a piece of their personality in that moment, and that I was able to connect with them through that photograph.

35. Look at other photographer’s work more than you look at your own.
Like Narcissus staring at his reflection in the pool, sometimes we spend way too much time looking at our work. If you want to improve your photography, spend more time looking at the work of other shooters. Decode the light. Think about what’s in the frame. Think about what’s not in the frame. Study the gesture, the expression, the nuance. Put yourself in the moment, the situation, the set. Close your eyes and be that other photographer for a bit. Open your eyes and be yourself.

Since I started learning about photography, I've looked at pictures in a different way. I think about how they composed the shot, what settings they used, how the lit the shot, and how I can recreate it with the gear I have. When before I browsed thru magazines just looking at the pictures, now I see what's in them.


Here are links to the series so far:
Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School 1-12
Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School 13-17
Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School 18-21
Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School 22-27
Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School 28-31
Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School 32-35

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