Why BAD Photographers THINK They're Good

I've been trying to get out and shoot for ages by was ill for a long time and I've been really busy and also the weather's been a bit like so instead let's talk about why some photographers rate their abilities a little higher than they really should and how you can avoid falling into that trap and make sure you have a good understanding of your own abilities so you know what work to take on and how far to push yourself [Music] early one morning in Pittsburgh in 1995 a man by the name of McArthur wheeler set out to rob a bank now robbing a bank is quite a risky thing to do but McArthur wheeler had a plan you see MacArthur had learned about how lemon juice can be used as invisible ink as it only becomes visible once it's exposed to heat so he had the brilliant idea of covering his whole face in lemon juice so the security cameras at the bank wouldn't be able to see him he was so confident in this approach that he went on to rob not one but two banks unfortunately for him this didn't work as well as he was expecting it to and he was caught within an hour and arrested now psychological evaluation of wheeler found him to be of sound mind he was just a man who had fastly overestimated his understanding of some basic science in other words he was just like the rest of us and this fascinated social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger and it prompted them to run a series of studies to investigate the discrepancy between people's self belief and their actual abilities the results of the studies show that the less confident someone was in a particular area the more likely they were to rate their performance highly in the area and this is because it takes exactly the same skill to be good at something as it does to understand how good you are at that particular thing and this today is known as the dunning-kruger effect and the results plotted on the graph looks something like this now on the horizontal axis here we have people's actual ability measured from no skill to expert and on the vertical axis we have the same measurements of no skill to expert but showing people's perceived ability of themselves so if we were to draw a line of an accurate understanding of your own abilities it would look like this green line here but the results of the studies showed the people with a low skill set in a certain area often rated themselves as near expert in that field not realizing how much they still had to learn and it was as they began to progress that they realized how much lay in front of them and their perceived ability of themselves started to drop now at the other end of the scale people with a high level of ability in something suffer from something called imposter syndrome where they actually rate their abilities lower than they actually are understanding how your abilities fare compared to other photographers is a key skill in learning photography it affects everything from learning what to charge for work to what work you can take on to understanding where you need to focus and where you need to develop your skills the problem is that overestimating what you're capable of can really land you in hot water when you start to charge for commercial work only to find that you're not actually up to the job before we go any further I'd like to point out that falling prey to the dunning-kruger effect doesn't in any way mean you're stupid pretty much everyone is susceptible to it and everyone experiences it to some degree or another I know I have in photography and other areas of my life but while there's nothing to beat yourself up about it is something you should take active steps to avoid so how do we escape the dunning-kruger trap it's not maybe an entirely bad thing that initial rush of confidence from overestimating your abilities will probably help you develop your skill and give you that push that you need to get yourself into something but aside from that there are some steps you can take to help you obtain a more objective view of your abilities of the photographer so firstly beware of feeling comfortable as soon as you start to feel comfortable challenge yourself change something try something new secondly learn to let go of old work we've all got those shots that we just feel are our best shots but try to better them try to forget about them and move forward if you keep coming back to old work it means you're not progressing try and push yourself forward try and build on what you've already done now thirdly ask for feedback and critique from good photographers on a regular basis now this can be difficult - sometimes it's hard to hear and it's the critique that really gets to you that is probably the most important because you know they're right take the temporary pain for the long-term benefits now it's very easy to get an Instagram account and to embrace all the likes that people give you and just feel really good about yourself and feeling good about yourself is really important but to really make those leaps in your progression you need to know what you're doing wrong and you need to better yourself and I'm not saying to listen to haters or trolls online ignore them they're just a bunch of losers who are trying to bring you down because they feel bad about themselves what I am saying is learn to not be Precious about your work learn to really embrace the criticism and move forward fourthly always keep learning you have never learned everything because the world is moving forward photography is always changing and because of this constant forward momentum if you stand still you're effectively going backwards so never think that you've finished learning something never think that that you've got you know everything there is to know about it cuz there's always more find it and make yourself learn it number five lastly understand that feeling bad about your old work is a sign that you're moving forward when you start to realize how not good you are that means that you've got over the biggest hurdle and you understand what you need to do so you're developing the skills in order to do better and that's a really really positive thing keep reading those books keep educating yourself keep practicing keep moving forward at the moment you've probably got a series of images that you think are your best images and you're amazingly proud of them and that's great but if in three years time you look back and you're still really proud of those images then you're probably not doing something right what's probably gonna happen is you're going to look back at work you think is brilliant now and you're gonna be really embarrassed about how bad it is and that means that you have moved forward so much and that is such a good thing I cannot impress enough upon you how important that is and how positive a is but ultimately while you should do everything you can to make sure that you understand how your abilities fair compared to others it's mainly just about enjoying the ride so don't worry too much about it just try not to be too precious because preciousness will hold you back you need to move out of your comfort zone of what you know in photography as well try and move away from fashionable trends and I noticed there is a bit of a fashion at the moment for sort of blue and pink neon shooting through prisms and that's all great but you know these sort of camera hacks videos and stuff will only take you so far what you need to do is understand a bit more about the language of photography so look at a completely different photographer look at someone who makes social commentary with their photography look at someone who makes abstract black-and-white with their photography look if the tog refers from history just get a bigger understanding to understand where you sit within the world of photography learn why you're doing things not just how to do them as a great line from Jurassic Park where Jeff Goldblum says yeah yeah but you're scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they couldn't stand to think of they shouted it's fine to follow all those fashionable trends and you know have fun honestly do it is great but just keep in mind that there's more to photography than that and always push to learn more [Music]

Channel: Jamie Windsor

Views: 2,421,698

Keywords: dunning, kruger, photography, brandon woelfel, photographers, tips, tutorial, canon, dunning-kruger, lesson, hacks, techniques, london, prism, neon, portrait, photo

Id: EmSYI6AjFUg

Length: 8min 56sec (536 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 07 2018