Improve Your Photography 30 Minutes at a Time

I often have students at my workshops come up and ask what is the best way to improve their photography. Just being at the workshop is a great step I tell them, but they want to continue to improve after leaving the workshop. My advice to them is to devote 4 weeks a year to photography education.

But I Don’t Have the Time
Of course they almost always respond with the fact that they don’t have that much time or money to devote to their photography education. So I ask if that could perhaps set aside 30 minutes a day to learn and inevitably they say they could. Well it turns out that thirty minutes a day for a year is equal to 4 weeks of learning.

30 mins/day => 182 hour/year => 22 8-hour days => 4 weeks

It’s not the intense training that you would get at a workshop but if you have ever been to a week long intense training class you will realize that it’s hard to retain all 5 days of instruction. I feel I have much better retention when learning in 30 minute chunks.

What Should I Study?
I have been following this program of 30 minutes a day of education for the past year. I set aside 30 mins in the evening after dinner every night. Here is some of the material I consume each evening.

• Read a photography book
• Watch an online training course from one of the following
  • Lynda.com
  • Kelby Training
  • Adobe (free training classes)
  • CreativeLive
  • Phlearn
• Read a photography magazine

As you can see there is a variety of content available. I could easily devote several hours a day to learning and not be able to keep up with all that I want to watch and read, but that is not the point. The point is to improve my photography education and I do every day, 30 mins at a time.

Practice What You Learn
Of course all of the education in the world is useless if you don’t pick up your camera and shoot. So schedule some time for shoots. Go on a photo walk, shoot things around your home, don’t spend all your time learning, practice what you learn.

Your Action Item: Set aside 30 minutes to improve your photography education and let me know how it works for you. I would also love to hear about what content you use during your 30 minutes.