Like almost everything these days, when you want to get better at something you turn to the internet. I was no exception. Free YouTube videos, $20 Udemy online courses, CreativeLIVE. Whatever I could afford, I consumed and began testing. I got to know my camera settings, learnt basic retouching and photo manipulation. And with this came more mistakes, more errors, colours would be over-saturated, unwanted halos created around subjects, faces would flatten, eyes would glow. It seemed my images went from bad to worse. I was hating everything I produced.

The internet also vomited out the fears of other wanna-be photographers. Problems and insecurities I didn’t know existed, were now placed at the back of my mind. Lingering before every shoot and before every new meeting. What were they gonna think of me? What if all the pictures were out of focus? The memory card failed? The model felt uncomfortable? The subject hated their pictures, hated me? What if no one liked my pictures? 

When you let in the fears and insecurities, it debilitates you.  Creativity is shunted. You lose energy and focus. You lose hope that indeed you can do what you set out to achieve. The internet has no filter. It brings forth what you searching for. And when researching online, the seemingly endless debate on equipment cost and camera shopping list requirements ran on. Clear groups within the photography communities emerged, the haves “I upgraded to the…” and the have-nots “its easy to create this image when you have X (insert latest $3k+ camera model)”. There were the old-school die-hards still taking pictures in film, scanning them and uploading onto their online portfolio. While others were making due on their mobile phone. It was and continues to be a photographic and filmatic free-for-all. I bought what I could, then got started on learning professional retouching. It was clear the pictures that got the most attention also happened to have the most post-processing and I wanted in!