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What have you learnt?

I have been looking through some of your accomplished projects and also reading of how much you gained by Tookapicikng every day. What skills have you improved💪? What shall I expect? 😉

17 comments

Marta Tomaszewska I was taking photos a lot also much earlier and I think that my general workshop is not so much better (in fact my best pics are from before tookapic era in my life).

But.. for sure I've learned how to process photos - mainly because it was correlation with going into Lightroom world. But when I look at the first pics I can tell the difference, even they are still from the same camera. I have better feeling about both gear and post-processing.
And that you can do decent photo even with the smartphone (my last concert pic "3.202" that gained more likes than some other more professional pics teach me that even more :D)
And that everything can be photographed in interesting way. I get comments from my friends that my selfies or daily pictures are somehow better than theirs. But it's mainly because I have written photography rules hard in my brain and I use them. I look at the frame, at the light, at the background - everything matters and in fact they are easy step to follow. It's not a rocket science to check if something is making shadow or is cut by the frame. It's only a matter of being careful about that.
Tookapic also somehow made me buying some "studio gear" (background for 29PLN/7EUR and constant light lamp for 120PLN/40EUR - so again - nothing super pro) which learnt me a lot about how to set up light and what you can do about product photography. And again - that you can do something nice at a low cost.

Sylwia Perkowska Marta, thank you so much for sharing your feelings. I appreciate it So much and hope to enjoy being a part of Tookapic community. Becoming better pic by pic.

120mr I thought that this pic was taken with the camera!

Marta Tomaszewska 😇 I could bet that my old Canon 5D would make a worse one ;)

120mr I was taking a daily photo before tookapic (but definitely not so long as @Marta) and I can say for sure that thanks to tookapic I develop more of them (and faster), not only the chosen one. It's way more easier to choose between the frames. I often question myself what is more important in the pic for me. But the best thing is that I take fewer photos during a day. I'm more efficent ;)

Lauren Huston It definitely becomes a habit and routine of viewing the day's photos, picking one and then editing and uploading, rather than "I'll have a look at these when I get a chance".

Lauren Huston Over the past 4 years, I can definitely see an improvement in the way I take and edit photos. Having the ability to compare yesterday/last month/last year etc is great as I do a lot of dated events (fireworks etc).

I've learned to be patient with myself and not expect a masterpiece every day. Sometimes not even for weeks at a time. Go back 4-odd years and I got frustrated because I was too tired to go out and I ended up with month-long gaps because I wanted to only upload exciting/epic shots.

I've also learned to not put so much assumptions in reactions from other people. I've had photos that I've uploaded thinking "everyone's going to love this!" and it gets minimal attention. I've also uploaded photos as a "meh, this'll do for today" and I've got photo of the day.

And who cares if I end up with a week's worth of cat photos? :) Ultimately, the project is for me, not anyone else.

(I think these may be slightly off topic to what you were asking, but I think these were definitely valuable lessons for me to have learned)

120mr A week of cat photos is always a good idea!

Lauren Huston My cats may disagree. :)

Marta Tomaszewska Yes! this people's reaction aspect is still a surprise for me. I have no idea how it works, even I show my pictures in public for over 10 years. I cannot predict the result.
Of course you can say that you're making this for yourself, but some basic "belonging syndrome" makes you wanting people to appreciate the same things that you like ;-)

Phillip Flores I can definitely say that my photography skills have improved. I am now more conscious of how I take a photo compared to just simply pressing the shutter button. I have also started to think a bit more about composition (still a long way to go on this) and how I want the photo to appear.

There was a time that the streak became more important than the photo and that lead me to simply upload photos just to maintain the streak and I sort of burnt out. That's why my second 365 took about 18 months to complete.

I also learned how to do post processing of the photos I took which is great fun. I mainly use Luminar for editing and Photoscape to do a quick and dirty scan of the photos I took for the day.

Sylwia Perkowska I am also curious what do you do with the photos. Do you store them somehow, develop or what? 🤔 I mean not only the photos of your day, but generaly.

agnieszka bladzik I'm keeping almost all that I edited and exported from raw. I clean up disc every now and then from some streak raw photos. i back up all important ones with both raw and export.
my parents tends to develop some photos I pick up from holidays.

on the other hand i have like 5 frames at home with photos that they came with - they still waiting for me to develop something. don't ask me for how long they are waiting.

Lauren Huston I'm a little extreme with mine. I generally don't delete images unless there's something extremely wrong with them (completely out of focus/shaky image etc).
Any photos i take get imported into Lightroom and stored in my catalogues, which are created per year.
The catalogues are stored on a drive which is synced one way to my google drive account with unlimited stored. Basically if the photo gets taken, it's online. I can delete the local copy if I need to gain space on the local drive (but very easy to redownload again if I do want to go back and edit them).
Also, whenever I do edit my photos and export them, that folder is also synced to my google photos which means I can search by topic / date etc using google photos. And makes it easy to show them off!

Yes, I am a geek lol. But it works for me!

Phillip Flores I store almost all of them except those that are really really crappy or just a test. I usually do the deleting when I transfer from the SD card to the disk. After a week or so I transfer them to a portable disk and delete them from the disk.

I have started to select some photos for printing and framing (my wife and children have been nagging me for a while).

Marta Tomaszewska I keep everything on my PC & at NAS as a backup. Some of them (processed ones) I have also in cloud.
I have two webpages (najeli.pl & ultramarta.pl - which are constantly in development as I'm webdeveloper :D).
I post them here and sometimes on Instagram & FB funpage.
I have my photos on my walls and some of my friends and familiy also have them.
My picture was made into wallpaper in our company kitchen (I doubt if I ever will have bigger print :D)
I have like hundred or two prints in 15x21 format to be able to show them to my guests if they want (or when I want my guests to see them ]:-> )

...and I still want to have full and current portfolio in the internet but I have like 2 years worth of photos to develop :D

Sylwia Perkowska Marta, that is Impressive 😍👏