Beginners naturally try to skip the learning curve and just jump right
to imitating the results they admire and that result is seldom
satisfactory and too often tends to be brittle, constipated, and
forced. It lacks the spaciousness and relaxation that comes from
long practice and exploration – stretching out.
Part of the problem is that by focusing mainly on the result and
generally ignoring (being ignorant of) the process, the best result is
not achieved. On the other hand, not being overly concerned about
the result but concentrating on (and learning to enjoy) the process
is actually a quicker path to good results. This is true because
learning and doing the process properly over time is what produces
the best results.
Too much concern with the desired result (the ‘great’ photo) is
counter-productive in that it obscures or tries to short-cut the
process it takes to reach the result. And that process, as
mentioned, is what actually produces the result, a Catch-22 if I ever
saw one. You get the idea.
Communicating more about the process of learning a technique
may actually produce better results more quickly than just posting
the results. And I wonder how aware any of us are of the process it
took to get from the beginning to where we are now for any
technique. And some of us value the process more than the result.
In other words, many of us like to do photography irrespective of
our results. I am one of those people. But I also find that by
thoroughly enjoying the process my resulting photos actually get
better too.
I came to this concept by learning to focus stack. I get lots of
questions about how to best go about stacking focus. And of course
I try to share the technique. But any technique is literally the
essence of our long experience and by definition is very compact or
condensed. The boiled-down technique (written out) does not
speak to the hundreds of thousands of photos that were taken or
the many years of taking them. The current photo results, the
technique I could tell someone in a few words, do not explain that it
was this very long process that incremented the resulting
technique.