Morning.

There are two types of Photographers, those that go out and create pictures. And those that talk about it instead.

Photographers that go out and create pictures are usually either, a) out creating pictures, b) editing those pictures, or c) researching for the next photo-shoot opportunity – they don’t have the time to be sat around on Internet Forums talking about the latest and greatest MPix Sensor or senselessly debating Nikon v Canon.

Too many “photographers” get sucked into Internet Forums, reading countless comments on topics posted by total strangers. Before long they even start to believe some of the things that are written.

Don’t get me wrong, Forums “Can” be a useful source of information – but only if backed up by an alternative and reliable source of enquiry.

A huge problem with forums is the people who post the most shoot the least. These forums make it impossible to know the credentials of the posters. Worse still is that if another poster dares to differ with the opinion of the resident “forum expert” then that person is heckled and belittled and will usually not return, or at the very least will not offer an opinion in the future.

There is absolutely no substitute for picking up your camera and going out and shooting – change your settings, play around, look at what you get and learn from it. You will learn far more from actually using your camera (and reading the supplier provided manual) than you ever could by asking a faceless person on the internet.

Since January I have shot 48K images on my DSLRs, 3k on my X100 and countless images on my phone – I don’t have the time to read Internet Forums – even if I wanted to!

If you shoot as much as you can, and post process as much as you can, then you WILL learn why RAW is better than JPEG. You WILL learn to understand your Histogram and you WILL learn how to colour correct in Photoshop – and you will have done this through trial and error – but you will have learnt!

If on the other hand you spend most of your free time surfing Internet Forums asking questions then you “may” get to the same conclusion, but you will have wasted all that valuable time when you could have been out having fun taking pictures creating art and learning.

I know what I would prefer to be doing.

Best – Colin