Pride - Seven Deadly Sins Of Photography

PRIDE: Seeing ourselves as something we are not. Pride and vanity are also collaborative. If someones pride really gets your goat, then you have a lot of pride.

In photography the sin of pride is a devastating sin. It will prevent you learning. It will prevent you accepting advice. It will make many a potential mentor shun you without you ever realising they have. Your development into a talented photographer will simply never occur. And why is that you ask? There's a simple and obvious answer to the question. If you are so prideful that you already believe you are a great photographer why would you struggle to actually be one? If you are so vain as to believe you already know best how can you ever listen and learn to a more experienced photographer? How can you ever see virtue in the work of anyone else if you are already the greatest? Also why on earth would anyone want to pause and help anyone so arrogant as yourself?


Now opening up to the fact that you are not the greatest at landscape, portrait, street or whatever type of photographer is difficult. You must subsume that huge ego. John Cleese once described this process of divesting yourself of ego as going to sleep thinking you're Atilla The Hun but waking up to find your a Budgie. Now it's very difficult to accept you are not always perfect but the benefits are enormous. If you are open to the fact you are flawed and have room to improve. You begin to strive to improve. You begin to be honest and examine your work more critically. You learn to listen and to take on board the opinions of others. That's how you grow as a photographer. It's how you approach greatness.


If you follow that advice then I am sure that one day you will be very proud of your accomplishments in photography. On that day being justifiably happy with what you've worked hard to accomplish is an entirely different ball game to just deluding yourself about your own greatness.


PS: The picture in the article is:

A/. The greatest picture ever taken.
B/. Has been posterized to hide the fact it's out of focus.

Which point of view will help me improve the most?