Improving your climbing photography – 12 week mini course – week10
For this week’s climbing photography lesson, I have just three words: review, review, review!
10. Review, Review, Review
If you are serious about improving then you need to be serious about reviewing and critiquing your work. How do the shots you took today compare to your favourite images from the pro’ climbing photographers?
Pull out your best two climbing photos. Why do you call them your best? What ‘makes’ those pictures for you? This is what you want to identify and reproduce.
When you’re editing your next shoot pause before you hit the delete key on the rejects. Pick a couple. Why are you about to trash them? Why are they ‘bad’ photos? This is what you want to avoid repeating.
Pick a couple of the ‘keepers’ that didn’t get a top star rating. Why did they miss that star? What would need to be different/improved? Find the answer to this and try to apply it to your next shoot.
It’s okay to be your own worst critic. But be disciplined and allow yourself to experiment and fail. Know when to silence the inner critic completely or you’ll stifle your own creativity in fear.
Equally good is to have other people give you feedback. Obviously you should only invite constructive, well-meant criticism. The UKC photography forum is one place to look.
There are many things that you cannot control, so a zen-like approach helps, as does flexibility and quick thinking to make the best of the conditions you have.
