These emails come with the intent of helping you be a better photographer. 

And if you want more photography stuff to read, there's a place on the interwebs where past emails I wrote are stored. You'll find 'em in the "Newsletter Hub." 

Remember, I'd like to know what you want to know about photography. So, If you have any questions, ask by sending an email to me at sam@samdamico.com. And for what it's worth. When you send me an email, unless someone's lookin' over my shoulder, I'm the only one that sees it.

Hello ,

Yesterday's email contained at least a couple of mistakes.

The first mistake is in the subject line, and the other is in the body of the email.

One is a spelling mistake; the other is a repeated word and incorrect word choice.

There's no room for personal expression, interpretation, or opinion regarding the correct spelling or use of a word because the correct spelling of a word is objective.

In other words, objectively, we spell the word correctly or don't spell the word correctly; we use the right or wrong word.

However, there's plenty of room for personal expression and interpretation when it comes to photography, so the line for the objectivity of distinguishing between correct and incorrect disappears.

In photography, there's no objective right or wrong way to create a photograph because what makes the composition of a picture right, wrong, bad, or good is subjective.

The final say on whether a picture is good or bad belongs to the photographer who created the image.

And if we're the photographer who created the picture, if we describe the image composition as wrong, we need to identify what element of composition made it bad.

Was it tonality?

Was it depth of field?

Was it blurry?

Was it sharpness?

I could keep going, but I think you get the point.

Self-critique is the best critique because the photographer who created the picture and knew the composition's intent is the only one qualified to define whether the photograph is good or bad.

Rules of composition have nothing to do with whether a picture is good or bad.

The only meaningful metric for critiquing a photograph as good, bad, correct, or wrong is whether the picture met the photographer's compositional intent.

Another thing I want to mention is that we not only need to know the mistakes we made, we need to understand why we created them.

Regarding my writing yesterday, I was hurrying to get the email out to you.

In my haste, I neglected to do a thorough proofread.

We make many mistakes if we rush through our creation of a photograph because we overlook many things.

One of the ways we rush through creating a photograph is our choice of working in fully automatic exposure mode.

Working in aperture priority, shutter priority, and manual exposure modes slows us down because we get more involved in camera operation and photographic composition.

If you haven't been thrilled with the compositions of your pictures, the Introduction to Photography class will slow you down, and composing photographs you'll be proud to show.

And we learn by doing.

The Introduction To Photography class will get you to do the work. 

And by doing the work, you'll be a better photographer. 

The last class of the January series of Introduction To Photography starts on Sunday, January 14, and there's only one spot left. 

Smaller classes mean better learning, So there are no more than five participants and me in each class. 

And remember, we learn and improve by doing, so practice making at least one picture today. 

That's all for now; thanks for reading! 
Sam

I'll help you be a better photographer—study and practice photography with me. 

And what if the timing doesn't work for you in any of my scheduled group classes? If that's the case, let's schedule a one-time lesson or a series of in-person or online private instruction that covers the same things as my group classes. 

Ways to work with me are listed below.