New Year’s Resolutions to Be a Better Photographer

Again, it’s this time of the year when motivation is in the air to finally start to be better, healthier and more successful in the upcoming year. New year is perfect time to set goals and resolutions to be a better photographer! Are you in?

Today, I’d like to share with you some of my photography resolutions! Hope you enjoy!

Here are my top 5 New Year’s resolutions to be a better photographer:

Shoot personal projects.

Shoot more! That is the primary way to get better at photography, by doing!

Don’t just focus on your paid assignment and what your friends ask you to do… Shoot for yourself! Have a creative concept and bring it to life!

As a result, you’ll better your photography skills, meet some great people (make up artists, models.. etc), you will also have something creative to add to your portfolio. As a cherry on top, you will stay inspired!

Let’s be honest, doing stuff for work only, over and over again takes away from fun and chances are it will cause a burn out. Stay creative and shoot something for yourself at least once a month in the next year!

Learn a new thing every day.

School or uni are not the only places where they are giving away knowledge. We live in such great time where everything is at our fingertips. Google, YouTube videos, blogs, podcasts… You can learn literarily anything from the comfort of your own home! Don’t get lazy with the abundance of free resources and take it for granted: use it!

Photographer, get a new habit in the new year, educate yourself. Little by little, teach yourself new tricks in Photoshop, lighting set ups, business and sales, etc.

My favourite way to learn and get inspired is Youtube. When I don’t feel like studying any particular subject, I watch whatever (photography related) video catches my eye while enjoying my morning Joe first thing in the morning.

Stop doubting yourself.

It’s so easy to start comparing yourself to other creatives in your field. It’s too easy I’d say! It can feel like others are more creative, they have better equipment and so on… Stop! You’ve got a unique vision and unique set of skills and experience. At this exact moment someone might be sitting and thinking the exact same about you and your work!

Shoot more. Share your work more. Your work is unique and beautiful in it’s own way!

Get organised.

Go to your hard drive and delete those RAWs you’ll never use. Let’s be honest they are just dead weight, and you don’t even look at them. Make room for new and more exciting projects the new year is going to bring.

If in doubt, keep the RAWs of your best images and compress to medium or low resolution those edited files you think you don’t need but want to keep (just in case) and use them as reference to keep track of your growth as a photographer.

Also, it will be quite useful to rename all the folders by the date and names of the team you worked with. This will make it easier to find the files you need.

Meet other photographers.

Meet your fellow photographers!

Network! When a busy season comes, photographers are looking to outsource: second shooters, assistants and so on. You never know where more work will come from!

Have a photography buddy to talk about all the geeky technical stuff. You’ll learn new things, get inspired and maybe have some of your questioned answered. How awesome is that!

Learn how you can improve your photography from home HERE.

Thanks for checking out this week’s blog! If you know any other new year’s resolutions to be a better photographer, please let me know in the comment section below!

Surround yourself with creative people and have an amazing year! Happy holidays!