 your camera is getting in the way of you taking the very best photographs that you possibly can. There is a piece of well-intentioned often repeated advice that says to become a better photographer you must take as many pictures as you possibly can. I'm sorry that advice is completely wrong. I'm indebted to Rob Moore who wrote a title on a recent medium article that I was reading that said stop taking pictures and start taking photos. I think that is possibly one of the best pieces of advice that I've heard recently. It completely blows out of the water this idea that all you need to do to improve as a photographer is to really just take you know thousands of photographs. If you take 10,000 photographs as the saying goes you will be a lot better but what if you don't take those photographs with any sort of intent with any sort of purpose just randomly machine gunning your way through every photo session that you have filling up CF card after CF card with the expectation that you know out of those thousands of photographs there'll be one or two that will be okay that would be you know worth keeping. How is that going to make your photography that much better when you turn up to somewhere and you get out your camera and you start taking pictures everywhere because you know you're excited then you are missing opportunities you're not connecting with the environment that you're in you're not you're not in them you're not in the game your head's not in the game right. The next time that you go out somewhere doing street photography right don't when you get off the train or off the bus or wherever you know when you go to the city don't just start taking pictures we nearly right have a coffee walk around a bit get a feel for the environment the ebb and the flow of the city life around you landscape photographers have this easy because they often need to walk and spend some time in the environment with their photographing before they get to take pictures so they are becoming naturally in tune with the landscape with the with the scene and and listening to its voice and how it changes its moods and portrait photographers have a similar thing where they can talk to the client so when you go off the next time to take photographs put your camera back in its bag when you get there right just chill right there will be opportunities you're not going to miss the once in a lifetime photo which we'll talk about in a second you're going to be actually taking this time as a warm up to you know to be in tune with the place because that way when you start to look around it's going to be less frantic you're going to be more open to the possibilities of things that you may have missed in that rush to take loads of photographs to make the very most of of the session that you have because when you start listening and this is especially more true in in street photography when you listen to what's going on when you understand the blow of the of the the sea of humanity around you you are going to be so much better placed for those events that happen do you think all the famous street photographers like you know that they just kind of they just happened upon these events that they are somehow luckier than us that you know because they just these things seem to happen to them all the time no it's because they are using all of their senses when they photograph they are not just snapping willy-nilly it may look like it because they have been doing this for decades they have been practicing and honing their skills until it becomes second nature but we are not famous photographers we are not that adept at taking these things right so we need to go a bit slower we need to be a little bit more purposeful now i'm not suggesting that you go like all W. Eugene Smith that very famous photojournalist who worked for Time and Life magazine who was you know well known for actually creating the photo essay and he was commissioned to go to to Pittsburgh to produce over a three-week period a hundred images for an article and ended up spending on and off about three years there and took 21 000 photographs so you don't need to go quite that full on into you know being in the environment and understanding its moods but you do need to connect with the place that you are photographing with the things that are in front of you on a recent video there was a guy called Tom Martin who commented that he has stopped listening to his instinct and i think this is this is also a good piece of advice because often our instincts about what may or may not be a good photograph can lead us astray can take us away from you know the the the real possibilities and we should rely more on our our attention why is caught our attention because if if our attention has been caught by something it often suggests that there is something more in that object that's worth exploring so whatever catches his attention he will photograph and then sort of see where the results come later on so you can see how there's there's process here there's intent about photographing there isn't just this kind of random snapshotty approach where it's you know spray and pray. Martin Popp is a very famous photographer who's made a career out of photographing the ordinary in this case often the British ordinary and finding the unexpected because he is taking the time to listen to the environment you know to to see the stories that sort of play out and also he's not afraid to take bad photographs in fact you know like a lot of other photographers he has given the advice that you know you should take bad photographs you mustn't be worried about taking there's nothing wrong with taking bad photographs because if you don't take bad photographs how would you know if you're ever taking a well a good photograph so again you can see that spray and pray effect isn't going to help you recognize what was good because if you're just spraying pray how do you know how do you know how you got that photograph in the first place if it was just one of a thousand random pictures that you took that is such a problem with modern photography because digital is is essentially free when we take pictures that there is a it's natural you can take loads of pictures you know i take far more pictures than i used to and what happens is you get people who are kind of new to photography or or not you know pushing themselves thinking that a random occurrence this is what we were talking about earlier that random thing oh i was so good because i got that random picture that they think that random thing is is enough to carry the photo that you know that that pigeon doing a quirky thing or you know just floating off into the sky or the way something has fallen over or something is how good they are as a photographer because they caught that thing it's that's not the same as being a photographer who is crafting an image who is being thoughtful and putting things together and making the best use of those random events when they happen we cannot run until we can walk and to walk we need to be intentional about our photographs we need to take them with purpose we need to listen and be aware of our environments and make the best use of it possible. Sebastian Sagado is a photographer who i feel epitomizes this this approach completely his work in the the minds in the amazon rainforest is is mind-blowing it is a it is a joy to behold and yet the images the messages they convey is anything but joyful it is about the insignificance of man and the the the basement that man will put themselves through in the chase of riches and you don't get those kind of photographs from just turning up taking a couple of snapshots and then just leaving you get that because he was involved he was he was he was listening to their stories and it goes the same in his landscape photographs they are just they're beautiful and sumptuous because he's allowing the subject to reach out to him to speak its voice i want you to start doing that and the best way for you to do that is to slow down put the camera down think about what's going on and watch salgado's video because he is a well the photograph i struggled to put them into words which is not the best advertisement but you click on there but go and watch it it's awesome thank you ever so much for being here and i'll see you again soon