Mastering the Four Pillars of Photographic Excellence

If you want to take photography seriously, you'll need to focus on the four pillars of photographic excellence:

1. Skill
2. Culture
3. Talent
4. Practice

Photography has evolved from technological upstart (the invention of the camera), to respected medium for artistic and journalistic expression, to a form of communication now so ordinary that professional photographers are increasingly eclipsed by untrained individuals wielding nothing more glamourous than a phone.

What used to require a blend of technical and aesthetic know-how, now requires almost no skill at all. Even the most sophisticated cameras can be thrown into 'auto' mode. All the aspiring photographer has to do is point, frame and shoot.

“If it's so easy, why should one need, or bother, to learn it?”, I hear you say.

Do I need to study photography?

The simple answer is that you no longer need to learn how to take a photograph. With the cameras at our disposition, literally anyone can take a photo. And yet, just like any human activity, if you want to be good at photography, a combination of learning and practice is your only sure path to excellence.

The good news is that there are plenty of options for learning photography. The internet is literally overflowing with online courses and advertisements for workshops and seminars, often led by pre-eminent professionals.

Indeed, one might suspect a correlation between dwindling work for professional photographers and the growing number of those same photographers who have turned to teaching. One might also ask why so many people are clamouring to become photographers, when professional work is so hard to come by - but that's an entirely different story.

If you want to take photography seriously, however, and are interested in exploring its potential as a medium of communication, expression and art, you'll need to focus on the four 'pillars' of photographic excellence: skill, culture, talent, and practice.

You should see these four 'pillars' as an indivisible package; you can't have one without the others. For example, talent without skill, culture and practice is little more than potential, and so on. Let's look at them one by one.

Photo by Marcelo Chagas

The four pillars of photographic excellence

1. Skill

It sounds obvious, but it takes skill to be a good photographer. If you want to master this highly technological art form, you need to understand the relationship between aperture and shutter speed. You need to understand how and when to adjust your ISO rates - and what impact higher or lower rates may have on the quality of your images. You need to understand which focal lenses will work in which situations and what type of camera is best suited to your preferred area of photography.

2. Culture

To create great pictures, indeed to understand what a great picture even looks like, requires culture. And by culture, I mean studying the history of photography - learning about the lives and work of the masters. Buy photo books. Go to exhibitions. Read about the philosophy of photography. In so doing, you'll begin to understand what photography as an art form represents and where it came from. You'll understand what inspired those who have shaped photography as an art and as a profession. This will help you chart your own creative journey and shape your development as a photographer.

3. Talent

Unsurprisingly, it takes a minimum of talent to be good at anything and photography is no exception. Anyone can get lucky and take a good picture from time to time, but it takes talent to do so on a regular basis. Unlike skill and culture however, talent can't be learned. It can't be acquired through effort. Talent comes from within. Either you have it or you don't. The question is, without skill and culture, how do you know if you have talent? The best answer is to find someone who has proven talent (like a recognized professional photographer) to look at your work. You may want to consider attending a workshop or signing up for a photo course as these are great ways to find out if you really have what it takes to become a good photographer. Talent needs recognition, it needs nurturing and it will only blossom through commitment and hard work.

4. Practice

It's blindingly obvious, but is nevertheless always worth remembering; you can't be good at anything if you don't practice. In his book 'Outliers', renowned journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell suggests that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become expert at something. No matter how impressive your talent, no matter how deep your understanding of photographic culture, no matter if you have mastered the technicalities of photography, the only way to realise your true potential is through practice - which means getting out there every day, or as often as you can, and mindfully creating (not just 'taking') pictures.

So, there you have it. All that remains for you, budding photographer, is to decide if you want to just be someone who takes pictures or if you want to commit to actually becoming a photographer. If you integrate these four pillars into your practice, you will set yourself on a path to a deeper understanding of the photographic process and a more profound and valuable realisation of your innate talent.

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Written by Yvan Cohen | Yvan has been a photojournalist for over 30 years. He's a co-founder of LightRocket and continues to shoot photo and video projects around Southeast Asia.

Cover image by Nina Uhlikova

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