Yes, yes, you should read about the rules of composition and buy a good camera and take lots of pictures. I’m not saying you shouldn’t. But I believe there is something else you need to do if you wish to improve your photography and take a really big step forward.

Something that will motivate you to keep going and become better. Something that will even show you what to improve in your photography. That something else is:

FEEDBACK

Sounds easy, right? Well… keep this in mind: not all feedback is created equal.

What you need is competent, professional feedback.

Sure you can post your pictures on Facebook, Instagram or Vero and so on. That is NOT competent feedback and you cannot rely on it.

So where can you get that valuable type of feedback if you don’t have a bunch of professional photographer friends? Starting with the highest level:

famous photo competitions

I have listed some of them here. most of these accept amateurs as well as professionals so anyone can try. you can be as creative as you’d like, there are categories for nearly everything

international photo competitions usually take a participation fee, so if you’re not ready for this yet go to the next point

stock photo agencies

if you can think of selling or donating some of your images, guess what, there are tens if not hundreds of stock agencies that will happily evaluate the quality of your pictures and give you valuable feedback at no cost for you

stock agencies are an excellent way to test your image quality. creativity takes a secondary role as they are looking for good usable images. all you have to do is register and submit your work. I’ve made another list here

some agencies are more demanding than others and I’ll explain that when I’ve managed to write my reviews in future posts. read their requirements and don’t get too discouraged!

photography apps

probably tired of the high demands of the big stock agencies, smart people created apps where you can upload your pictures (and videos), compete with other more or less amateur photographers, win prizes and even sell your work

here is a list pf photo apps I’m using and there are certainly more around – feel free to tell me what you found!

these apps are nothing like each other. they can be community-based, competition based and so on. you can submit literally anything

so far I’ve written a review of Stockimo, which is one of the easy-to-use apps and focuses on selling iPhone photos. I’ll review the others in my list as well. just follow the blog!