Five Ways To Improve Your Photography

In this new year have you set any New Year’s resolutions around your photography?

Has your photography over time gotten a little predictable maybe even boring? Are you shooting the same images seemingly over and over again?

Rick Bebbington has a short 11-minute YouTube video about five things you can do to improve your photography and suprise it has nothing to do with gear LOL.

Here’s the link: “My photography was pretty boring…until I did this.“

Rick said it really well in this video.

If you’re shooting boring images with your old gear going to a super new camera with mega megapixels is just going to produce the same boring image only bigger.

For me one of the fastest ways to change my photography is to shoot more and to shoot more in photo-enriched environments around my own hometown and yes exotic locations when possible.

For example, one of friends from The Toronto Photo Walk group is going on a three-month trip to VietNam. Now I’ve been to VietNam and I would go back in a heart beat as it’s a photographer’s paradise when it comes to images.

My trip to Costa Rica to shoot birds last year introduced me to a whole different way of shooting and I’m still printing the images from that trip.

But you don’t have to leave your hometown to find great images.

Speaking of printing I printed several of my images from last weekend’s Polar Bear Dip in Oakville Ontario which I attended along with several members of the Oakville Camera Club.

There is no comparison between viewing your digital images on a screen and looking at prints you’ve made displayed on the walls of your room (even if it’s the bathroom).

One of the biggest challenges all photographers face is comparing their work to what others are shooting.

There are several photographers in my club and my photo walking groups who can shoot my pants off. I dare not compare my work with their’s not only it’s better than mine but because their shooting is significantly different than my own.

I come from decades of shooting as a professional photojournalist. It takes some readjustment of my thinking to go out and shoot an image of a flower or landscape. And, yet some of the best images ever taken by anyone have been simple photos shot around the home of family and friends.

In other words shoot what you love.

I want to close off today with this quote from Rick:

“Interesting isn’t where you go, it’s how you look at where you are.”

Finally if you really want to improve your shooting in 2026 go join a photography club that offers mentoring and has an extensive program of shooting opportunities and professional led workshops for its members.