From an email from David DuChemin….

Want better photographs? Of course you do. We all do. But it’s probably not our gear, or lack of it, or how old it is, that’s standing in the way: it’s our excuses and lack of creativity. How do I know? Because we have the most advanced cameras ever (even that ancient Canon Digital Rebel the people in your camera club look down their noses at) and we’re still not making photographs that are stronger than those made by photographers from 20, 30, or 100 years ago. It’s not the gear. Make this the year you never once blame the camera. Make it the year you embrace whatever constraints the gear (or life) presents you with, and then get to work. Work around it or work with it. But work. If you want to upgrade, do it. You probably need to. We all do. But don’t upgrade your camera. And if you do upgrade your gear, you should probably still keep reading, because your better camera will still not make better pictures. That’s still your job. Here are 10 upgrades that’ll take you so much further in 2019 than upgrading your gear: Upgrade your skills. Learn a new aspect of the craft. Not seven of them: one. Learn to work with motion or learn to light a portrait. Learn to use the exposure triangle like a freaking ninja. Take a workshop that will challenge you. But really learn it. Go deep with it. Spend the year mastering it and not merely dabbling. We dabble too much. Upgrade your understanding of composition and visual language. Don’t look at 1,000 images a day on Instagram. Look at one or two and figure out why they work and how you can replicate that effect or feeling. Don’t end 2019 without understanding how to give your images greater depth, energy, balance, or story. I’ll be offering my course, The Compelling Frame, once more in September; that might be a great place to begin your study of visual language. Upgrade your creative process. The photographer’s brain is her best and strongest tool. Learn to think creatively, not merely technically. Want a great place to begin that study? Consider reading my book about creativity, A Beautiful Anarchy. However you do it, learn what it means to be creative and how to upgrade that process for yourself. Upgrade your willingness to make more work, to go deeper, to shoot a personal project that you push through even when it gets hard or on which you plateau during the boring bits that every creative project has once the initial spark fades and you’re left alone, without the muse, to make the magic yourself. Upgrade your ability to sit in one place and really see that place. Learn to quiet the voice that tells you you’re missing something by not being somewhere else. Be present. Be receptive. There are a lot of things the camera can’t do, things that are our job alone (ahem, I wrote a book about this, too), and this is one of them. Upgrade your ability and willingness to make more sketch images—more failures and what-ifs—and less worrying about what others think. Make way more photographs and see where they lead you. Upgrade the gamut of your craft. Photography is so much more than a digital capture and some tweaks in Adobe Lightroom. Save the money on the lens or camera you were going to buy and get a printer. Learn to print. Upgrade your output. I don’t mean more posts on Instagram. Do fewer of those and slow down instead: apply your creativity to longer, deeper edits. Make a book. Print a monograph. Get your photographs off your hard drives and into the world of the haptic and the tangible. Upgrade your mentors. There is a world of astonishing photographers out there and they need not be alive to learn from them. Stop taking advice from that guy who bought a camera two years ago and now leads workshops and cranks out Lightroom presets. And don’t only listen to me, either. Study the masters. Buy a new book of photographs every month or so and really study them. Get books by photographers you’ve never heard of. Ask others what they recommend. Make the Magnum website a place to discover new names, both present and past. My latest discovery is Willy Ronis, and Willy Ronis by Willy Ronis is fantastic. Of course, you could also pick up a copy of one of my own books, SEVEN, or Pilgrims & Nomads. Upgrade your experiences. Forget that new camera: save the money and go to Venice. Or take a week off and make portraits, or go to the coast or the next town over, or go see your kids or your aging father. Do things that matter to you, that stir the wonder in you, that challenge you. Do it at home, or travel, it doesn’t matter—but do it. And then photograph those things. Don’t be seduced by the idea that the better camera will make better photographs; they’ll just be sharper images of the same old stuff. Spend the money on living the experiences your creative soul longs for and explore those experiences with the camera you know. The gear you have is enough and probably will be for quite some time. Upgrade the photographer instead. It’ll be cheaper, less frustrating, and here’s what matters: it’ll be the one upgrade that changes both your experience of photographing and the photographs themselves.