When seeking advice, consider the talent of the source of the advice.  That seems simple enough, but when you’re starting out, you’ll come across so much advice.  Some solicited some not.  Even when you seek advice you may run across someone giving advice whose work just isn’t up to snuff.  That’s fine and all; I mean we have the whole freedom of speech thing.  But the level of work really speaks to the credit of the advice.    

I read a lot of blogs, and most advice is solid.  Every once in a while I’ll come across an article that will grab my attention and the pictures accompanying the text are just HORRIBLE.  For example, I read an article about “Cropping to save an unusable image.”  From where I sat, the image was just unusable.  No amount of cropping would save that picture. 

Now you’ve gotten here, reading this blog, and I’ll be spewing advice from time to time.  By no means am I the defining voice of photography, but I hope that you’ll judge my advice according to my work.  One thing I’ve always done is to seek out work that I like, and find out what techniques were used to achieve a certain effect.  If you see it, you know it can be done; it’s just a matter of how to get it done. 

BTW, please don’t judge my photography advice by the quality of my writing.  If I start talking about writing novels, be skeptical. 

My kids are frequently on the receiving end of my unsolicited advice.