Often times, while looking for creative ideas, I see and read a lot of comments from others regarding someone’s image or images that they took. They say things like ” that’s not a good idea” or “if you can’t understand the exposure triangle, don’t be a photographer”, and the list goes on and on.

Inevitably, if you share your work, and you should, you set yourself up for situations like this. However, what if those individuals were curious instead of judgmental. Saying things like “Why did you try that technique ” or “I’ve tried this technique, would that have worked for your image?”

Let me give you an example. How many times have you come upon a scene and thought to yourself, this is boring, no picture to be had here. What if you used your curiosity? Can I make an image by moving to a different position? What if I underexpose or overexpose? Can I wait a bit longer to see if the light changes? Approaching it in the latter sense will afford you possibilities that you may not have potentially see.

In this image, I had the mentality of how can I make it more visually interesting? Although the sunset itself is nice with the clouds capturing the color of the sunset, I knew that had been shot a thousand times. When I saw the sailboat, I thought this is how I can do it. I had to wait a few minutes for the ships mast top be dead center in the sun, but I like this image and feel it was worth the wait. So to summarize, be curious, not judgmental, not only with others images when viewing, but your own as well.

I would love to hear your comments and experiences below in the comments section.