 It was at the lowest point in my photographic career that my wife finally took me to one side and showed me the importance of having structure and goals in my photography. I've been feeling increasingly frustrated with everything to do with photography and just to get out of the house I said let's just go to our favourite restaurant and we were sitting there amongst the hub of everybody enjoying their dinners and I was absentmindedly just toying with my fries because the thoughts were still lingering. They hadn't been left at home. They were still stuck in my head about how I was frustrated. I wasn't making any progress in my photographs. Despite having at that point like 20 years worth of experience and running a studio and all these sort of things that I just felt mired in a place where my work seemed to be going backwards that I was becoming a rubbish photographer. I turned to Shana and I said you know why do I not seem to get anywhere that no matter what I take it's just it's rubbish. You know the photographs are not good at all. So she turns to me and she says Alex I don't think that you really want to be the photographer that you believe you can be. I was like why do I work? She says because if you did you would do something about it. You would put a system in place but you don't. All you do is chase around from fad to fad to fad. You do arbitrary things that just confuse you. So unless you want to spend the rest of your photographic career doing nothing just chasing your tail then don't bother with the system. But if you really want to get back to that passion that you felt for photography when I first met you you need to have a goal and you need to work at it. Having a specific goal in place is what so many photographers on YouTube I think I'm missing a trick. They're filling our heads full of not mumbo-jumbo but fluff, confusing bits here and there you know here's all the composition here's all this and they don't talk about specific goals. Through the whole of the rest of this year whenever you are watching it approach photography with a specific goal to find the bits that you need to put together on that journey towards the goal. So Shana had been talking about you know having a goal something that is tangible that you could work towards and in my case I wanted to create a body of work that I was really proud of that maybe I could show in a gallery or you know something like that. Now your goals and your systems and stuff may be different right there are many people here on the channel who are going to ask them about you know what they want to achieve have said it's a very interesting thing you know one person said that they want to create less fluff and more kind of meaningful work. Okay so their goal might be to define what meaningful is. Now there's another example of a photographer I'm currently mentoring and they have a great example of a specific goal they want to in their camera club there are three sort of tiers of judging and they're currently in the bottom tier they want to move up to the next tier now to do that they need to get certain averages in their scores during the judging. So how are we going to help him achieve this? So the first thing to do is think about in your own thing ask yourself two questions one has something in the past worked for you when you've been trying to achieve a similar goal and then the second is has something in the past worked for somebody else when they're achieving a similar sort of goal. So in this case we've got the man you know in his camera club and we can see all his scores and we can see what scores well and what doesn't score well when he's wanted to improve his photographs and get higher scores he has taken these kind of photographs in his case a lot of them are sort of abstract flower images. Okay so that's worked for him in the past right what works for other people. Now again we have the beauty of being able to see everybody else's images and you know their scores and what have you and you can look at them you say well why does this particular image score very well right so you've got two people who two avenues that we can use as ideas and strategies to improving that photographer achieving that goal. I'm well aware that a lot of you you know obviously this is just a hobby you know photography is something you do for fun and it has to be balanced with all the other demands on your time and what have you so rather than saying to you look you need to commit to a 365 day project or something that is going to really kind of end up feeling just more like a chore we're going to break down how we're going to devote your time to doing the photography that's going to move you towards achieving this goal and we're going to take a lesson from a topic habits. Now I love these you know these business books that talk about you know how to approach various things in life because they can be applied to so many things and I thought this is a great way of actually applying a structured progression in photography so we can see a result I see an improvement we're going to take the 10 30 100 principle and apply it to photography so the first thing is going to do is for 10 days you're going to do one thing that moves you towards your goal so if this photographers goal was to you know get better marks and we've established that in the past when he's done the abstract photographs of flowers that those have done pretty well that's what he's quite good at we can spend 10 days taking a photograph of a flower in an abstract way every you know time that sounds a bit weird but take a photograph of an abstract flower every single day for 10 days now if you miss a day you have to go all the way back to the beginning this is more not about making action improvements but seeing if you have the commitment to make this change it's important that we are committed to the process of achieving the goal that we have set ourselves now after he's done this for 10 days because wow I can call like I'm seeing a little bit of improvement but not a huge amount but he has proven to himself that he is committed to this process and that's great because his brain is starting to change a little bit you know that he's starting to be rewarded for doing these little habits every single day now the next 30 days he's going to do the same again the same thing every single day a picture of a flower in an abstract way and this is where you do start to see a little bit of improvement that you will over that course of those 40 days start recognising that you know what you're actually tapping into something here and this is why it's so important that you don't delete photographs that you keep everything you take in one folder so you can go from the oldest photograph to the newest one and see the change now you don't have to commit 100% to taking photographs every single day for 40 days but you do need to not have time where you just leave it one day here or there it's okay then of course you can guess what's happening we're going to do 100 days 100 days of photographs every single day now of course at this point okay look 100 days that's a big commitment right nobody expects somebody to do something every single day for 100 days well apart from maybe brush their teeth or something like that but try and commit to it as much as is possible and at the end of this 140 day period that you have now been working on these abstract flowers or photographs whatever it is that works for you to get to your goal you're going to see a radical improvement in your photography when I started taking photographs specifically in the same style the first ones they're a little bit they're not quite right there's bits in there that aren't really working and they got ditched later on and that's kind of the thing this changes your approach this approach isn't quite working it's not getting me where I want to get to then change it change the approach the goal stays the same but try a different approach try coming at it from a different angle it may be that photographing abstract flowers every single day for 40 days it doesn't really at the end it's a bit of a dead end the photography will have improved it's not quite getting where you want to get so maybe you go well okay I'm going to take a leaf from other photography I'm going to find so every day for 10 days I'm going to try and find photographers who inspire me with their average the abstract photographs and make a collection of images that inspire and prompt ideas for me to change these are wonderful approaches it is important that throughout this whole process that you take the time to reward yourself with the little stages along there it can be whatever you decide but something that is like a pat on the back you know maybe you treat yourself to a new book or maybe a fancy dinner or something that is like a little yay me it's easy to become so serious in photography isn't it you know I'm going to just sit there and I'm going to be very earnest and do you know sometimes like yeah I'm really proud of this this is cool I've done something that I so much enjoy you know whatever it is that works for you just keep the focus that this should be fun and above all you need to be brave I mentioned having courage earlier to stop caring about what other people think and if you'd like to find out more about how this is a vital skill in growing as a photographer then check out this video over here thank you ever so much for watching and I will see you again soon