Congratulations! You’ve got a brand new camera, or lens, or some other sort of accessory that creates better images. “Better images” that is. The term is incredibly subjective, but some of it has a psychological connection and emotional connection. Your camera knows nothing about how to bring a bride to tears about how beautiful she looked at her wedding. It also has no knowledge at all about capturing the first moments and reactions when someone is able to walk again after a long struggle with physical therapy.
Photographer Lukas Gisbert-mora said it absolutely best recently. He clearly stated that he doesn’t work for DxOMark and isn’t interested in numbers and charts. He’s more interested in what comes out of the camera. None of us should be worrying about something like this because any problems that we have with our images can be fixed very easily if you just take the time to sit there, evaluate what’s going on in the image that doesn’t make it satisfy your desires, and take the time to adjust it. Your camera is in no way smarter than you are. And it won’t help you take better images necessarily.
When someone asks me to review their photo portfolio, a piece of advice that I tend to give it to photographers it to limit their photos to selections that will clearly elicit emotions out of someone. If a person simply just looks at an image and moves on, then you’ve done a terrible job with it. But if they look at it for a while, stare at it, or have some sort of a change in their facial expression, then you’ve done your job.
The way to actually create better images isn’t to sit there in forums with self-loathing trolls who hate everyone’s work, it’s to figure out what will bring about the emotions and feelings out of people.
After all, photography is art. And art is supposed to move people. Now go out there and create better images.