I've been taking a lot of pictures, recently. I've deleted many, and have always felt like I'm letting too many bad shots through the gate, but these times it's been happening quite often, and I'll tell you why.

I've been taking pictures with my current camera for half a year, and I feel I'm getting the hang of the camera. If you'd ask me about technical terms and camera specs I'd surely unwittingly give you the wrong numbers, terms and even dimensions most of the time, but frankly and clearly, I'm not into the technical aspects of taking pictures. I couldn't give half a minute to thinking about what temperature, aspects, composition and what-have-you-not that the picture “should have“ in accordance with “some schools“. It's just like guitar-playing is to me; the little bits make the big work, and sure, I've found some of the bits that make a pattern for me, the things that make it happen for me, but know this: mostly, happenstance is what makes my pictures happen. Yeah, just pure fluke. Chance. Something happens and I capture it on camera.

I'm not going to be an idiot and say this is standard for all. There is more than one difference between somebody who knows her trade well and somebody who doesn't. In photography, it's more up to picking the good pictures, a fact that's more true in the digital era than any other time.

See, us digital wankers nowadays don't have to care a tiniest bit about the number of pictures we take. Most don't even think twice about taking a picture or not, and don't have to care about how many pictures or how much video-space they've got left in the memory card lodged in their camera. And many have spare cards. And they can always sort out “the bad ones“ afterwards.

Me? I don't care. A bad picture is a bad fucking picture. You can't polish a turd. No, I don't care if you're one of the people who designed, created and built Photoshop, it clearly doesn't matter in the least. Ken Rockwell, people. No matter what kind of camera you use, your skill shines through. I've seen some of the best pictures ever taken with mobile cameras, and I'm not taking the piss and am not simply saying that punk is best. Fuck that. A punk taking a picture using a shitty camera is in exactly the same position as the upper-class twit sporting the latest, most expensive gear. So what? If you take a picture of a turd using a super-camera, it'll probably gleam more, you can get more details, you can Photoshop it to oblivion ““ and it will still be a turd. No, I'm not condemning the photographing of turds, you git.

So get a hang of it. Do it yourself, your own style. One can't say schooling is bad through and through, as it means (if you're nicely schooled, that is, and people didn't try to jam stuff down your throat) you've been getting the feel of somebody else's ways and learnings, which means you're more free to be yourself; or you can be yourself completely, never take a lesson in your life and perhaps miss out on the techy details that would add a lot of swagger to your pictures. Everybody's call, here in the developed world.