My coach was more of a realist. He always told me that this particular universal truth was missing something. He would say: "practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect". I always dismissed this as just an attempt by my coach to be funny, but then one day I got the following piece of advice from my dad, which kind of made everything fall into place. My dad said to me: "stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." Wow! It all makes sense now. My coach and my dad were really saying the same thing. Practice will not make you perfect unless you keep changing your approach. If you keep practicing doing something wrong, you'll just get really good a doing it wrong! You have to keep approaching the problem from different angles until you get it right. It's like evolution, if each creature born was exactly the same as their parents, nothing would evolve.
So what's all this got to do with photography anyway? Well, the same applies to photography. Practice makes perfect, but only if you keep changing things, trying new approaches to the same problem, experimenting. If you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you will get the same picture every time.
My photography took a great leap when I joined a local studio meetup group which allowed me to experiment with lighting in a fun, no-pressure environment. There are no clients to impress, no teachers to satisfy, no grades. Just set up the lights and shoot. Did YOU like it? No? Change something. How about now?
This little fun exercise taught me more about photography than any book or blog out there. In addition, I got to see how other people work out their lighting problems. It stimulated my own creativity by observing the creative process in others. I would highly recommend joining such a group if one is available in your area. There really is no substitute for practice. Perfect practice.
In conclusion, the main point I was hoping to get across here is that it is not enough to go out and practice for the sake of practicing. If you do the same thing over and over again, you will become very good at that ONE thing. So change things up a little. Tilt the camera, add a light, take one away. Experiment. Don't be afraid of making mistakes. After all we tend to learn more from our mistakes than our successes.
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