High performance cameras are the same. Shooting the camera in Auto Mode will get you an okay picture, but you have the potential to do so much more.
When you shoot in Auto, the camera makes all of the decisions for you, and that’s a problem…

…Because The Camera Has No Idea What You Want The Photo To Look Like!

I remember when I got my first high performance camera, the original Canon Digital Rebel. I remember my excitement thinking about how awesome my photos were going to be.

That excitement quickly faded when I saw that my photos still sucked.

I’m not going to lie. It hurt when I realized that my photos sucked even though I had this powerful, expensive camera.

The pictures looked NOTHING like the pictures in my head! And all the different dials, buttons and settings made absolutely no sense to me.

I couldn’t make the camera focus on the spider web. I tried for over an hour; changed setting after setting, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t make the camera take
the photo that I wanted it to take.

All That Time Fighting With The Camera Made Me So Mad That I Almost Smashed It Into The Wall. It’s No Wonder So Many People Just Give Up On Photography
And Let Their Camera Collect Dust.

It became my mission to figure out which settings you need to use to consistently capture awesome photos. Obviously, if you don’t know how to use your camera it won’t do you much good. And these things aren’t exactly cheap, you want to get your money’s worth.

But, in 2001, you just had a bunch of books and magazines. There were just a few ebooks, videos, and podcasts back then. It took countless hours of reading, watching, listening and practicing so I could understand how to make the photos in my head come to life.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of really wonderful photographers out there who happen to be terrible teachers. Instead of finding help in all of these resources I just got more frustrated and confused. I’m not criticizing them for wanting to help, in fact I applaud them.

It just takes the right kind of person to be able to take something as complex as photography and make it easy to understand.