There’s no mystery to becoming a master photographer. You need to look at your camera as a user interface that you can modify. Everything about it is yours to understand and control. When you can connect your emotions or how you feel about your subject to your camera, this transcends anything else you learned about photography and becomes the stepping stone to photographic mastery.

While everyone I teach hopes it’s a certain camera body or lens that will push them over the goal line, or a special piece of post-processing software that will win them awards, etc. The real essential ingredient is emotion. Being able to connect with your gear to express your feelings through the lens. . . that is the stuff of masters. To be blunt, I can teach a monkey how to press a shutter button. But the ability to strip away all the outside pressures and just share what’s on your mind while you have a camera in your hand, that is the real deal.

Yes you need gear and you need to know it backwards and forwards. But once you have conquered that, it’s time to move on and concentrate on telling stories.

I will get angry emails about this post because I am pulling back the covers on a truth that many do not want to face. They don’t have the courage to just put themselves out there, come what may, and to express their true feelings. Do you?

So I end this simple and short post where I started.

You need to look at your camera as a user interface that you can modify. Everything about it is yours to understand and control.

After that, it’s all heart. I am rooting for you.