Maybe, but I try to be objective in a larger context which of course includes some very good photographers. So they kinda set the curve, so to speak…
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I agree. You definitely have print worthy pictures.
This hits home. In the end though, even trying or getting within 90% of those amazing artists still puts you ahead of 99.9% of everybody else.
Regardless, and this applies to everyone, I think it’s okay to print less than good pictures to have some contrast with the good ones 
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Walking around in the world I see a lot of shit that somebody first thought was worth printing, second thought was worth paying for and thirdly thought was worth displaying on a wall… from what I have seen over the years I bet you have some nice photos to print and be proud of…
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Exactly, which is why I keep trying. You need a goal to shoot for, and you need some kind of metric to verify you’re progressing.
Thanks, and I can see improvement over time. I tend to take the “two wrongs don’t make a right” approach when looking at other less-than-ideal work and haven’t reached a point yet where I feel compelled to print. IOW, someone else’s ‘misjudgement’ (to be charitable) isn’t license for me to do the same. But I still do! LOL
Plus, for me personally there’s another factor: Why hang an image on my wall that I can see just “outside” – for some relatively near value of “just outside” ? I’ll be far more likely to print / hang an image taken at a legit photogenic location, if at some point I can pull one from a hat.
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There are many possible uses for printing a photo of yours. Printed photos take away some degree of our control as viewers. Unlike screens, prints are not there only on demand. They just adorn your wall and will catch your eye from time to time. And since you’re in a manifold of different personality states over the course of time, you’re giving yourself a chance to glimpse things that you may not have noticed on screen when you only ever look at the image intentionally, never by chance.
That’s why I’ve already printed two of my first ~3,000 exposures I’ve taken with my very first interchangeable lens camera. It’s not because they’re that beautiful, but because having them in my apartment will force me to look at them and e.g. discern things that I find wrong or boring about it, or particularly good. It opens a constant alley for contemplation and insight into the processes between self and photography and so on.
So, even though you’re the far more experienced and accomplished photographer, my advice to you would be to just force yourself into deciding on one or two images of your own to have printed. Or at least to have a possible future print in mind when taking and making future pictures. Screens are rubbish. Prints are the other side of photography, only print gives proper birth to a photograph imho.
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I think that photographic technology is still developing and we will see a lot of new and interesting stuff in the next decades, but (…drumroll…) it will have little marginal benefit to the quality of my photos since technology is rarely my constraint.
It would be great if it was (if only I had less noise, better IBIS, better tracking AF, etc) because then I would not have to invest a lot of hard work and I could just spend money. But it isn’t really.
I decided to get back into photography as hobby bit more than a year ago, because I wanted to take better family and travel photos. One decisive experience was in 2022, when we called a professional photographer to take family photos with our 2 year old daughter (“in the wild”, not studio). They turned out beautifully: expressive faces, moments captured, everything in focus that needs to be, nice bokeh for the rest, etc.
From the EXIF data I see that all of them were shot with an Olympus PEN E-PL7 that was 8 years after release, and nothing else than an Olympus 45mm f1.8 lens. From the file numbering I don’t see a lot of gaps, which means that almost all (more than 90%) photos taken by the photographer turned out well. While the lens is still considered good, reading reviews of this camera today makes it look like great-great-great grandpas daguerreotype camera. But in expert hands it is a great tool. Skill and experience matters a lot.
Also, with my recently acquired Panasonic GX9, I realized that I barely know my current camera and lenses. I have been learning about its focusing modes for a month now, and I am getting much better photos as a result. I have so much to learn about the body and my lenses that to buy anything else at this point would simply mean that now I know even less about (ostensibly) better gear.
Finally, I am also learning that constraints are enlivening. I have not removed the 50mm equivalent lens from my MILC camera for a long while, and I try to shoot everything with it. I cannot always take the picture I wanted, but I can almost always shoot something, and often it turns out to be much more interesting than what I originally intended.
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Yep, the same for me. I have thousands in guitar equipment, but I finally realized that I’d never amount to anything. And yes, I took lessons for several years. I could do the techniques, but it never came out “musical”.
OTOH, my youngest son picked up my stuff and could play well almost from the start. He now plays professionally.
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OMG LOL, I believe we may have come full circle on the topic of GAS 
Seriously though, for me and I bet many people, a lot of the basic know-how and not being afraid of technology in the first place came from having stuff around from a young age. It’s particularly the unused stuff, too! Like dust-collecting instruments, hi-fi equipment, photo gear, you name it. For a kid, that’s the kind of playground that can foster life-long deep hobbys or even careers. So maybe that’s what GAS is good for is what I’m saying
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Oh man! Please allow me a minute to praise the gear you already possess. I have this same exact combo (E-PL7 + 45mm 1.8 prime) and it’s an incredible little rig that fits in the palm of your hand. Unfortunately either the body or the battery bricked on me about 18 mos ago and I haven’t sorted it back out, but the M43 stuff is just incredible. The 45mm is in fact the only lens I ever shot on with that camera.
Shooting with one lens forces you to be creative. Thanks to Hugin, I got really good at stitching panos together, which I learned could be done hand-held and pretty much error free due to the 45’s almost distortion-free glass edge-2-edge. And you know what? It was okay. Whenever i needed a wider field of view, I just set the AE-L and would take a series of 4 - 20 shots, completely hand-held (!!), merge, then crop to whatever looks best. I can’t do the same with my older Pentax gear (a K-5 and 18-55mm kit zoom) - the images are too distorted and not nearly as clean.
This was stitched from ~ 12 shots as I recall.
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This is becoming “let’s quote Len and have at it”…I guess you have triggered a lot of thinking!
I used to be good enough on both guitar and harmonica to get out in jams and not embarrass myself, but have barely touched either in the last 15-20 years, mainly because my time has become stretched so thin. I pulled both out last week, and found I could still play the old Muddy Waters and Lightnin’ Hopkins stuff on the guitar (my fingers started to protest about that within about 5 min), but the harp playing was so pathetic I almost threw it across the room. There may be hope for the guitar if/when I get to retire, but the harp is probably best forgotten about.
With photography, I do feel that I am making gradual progress, subject to the same time limits as the other stuff. But I sometimes go out, get no decent shots at all, but still have a great time just because I’m outdoors in nice surroundings. Often it’s about what level you used to be at, and whether you are trying to improve at something for the first time or get back to a level you used to be at.
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Woo-hoo… does that make me an Influencer? LOL …now where’s that “smug smirk” emoji ?? 
I’m my own worst enemy in this regard. I like stuff like Allan Holdsworth, Dixie Dregs, Al DiMeola, Zappa, Gentle Giant … You know, not mere-mortal music! But my weakest point has always been my musical ear. I can tell I’m doing something wrong or that something in that chord changed, but I can’t tell you what it is so I can’t make it right.
Sounds like me back in the late '80s when I got my private pilots license through Civil Air Patrol. I paid for it out of pocket, so I sometimes went weeks between lessons. I spent the majority of my time each lesson catching up with what I had forgotten since the previous lesson. My last PIC time was in 1992, BTW.
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Definitely setting a high bar for yourself…
Unreachably high. I could struggle though a few of their simpler parts but only just. And then if I didn’t play it constantly, I’d lose it
I have much less money in guitar gear, basically an acoustic and an electric guitar, and even sold my amp because I use a software amp anyway so I only need a USB dongle, but I only play for my own enjoyment, not because I imagine that I would “amount to anything”.
I find the effort put into mastering a piece on the guitar therapeutic. I first play it slowly from the tab, then memorize sections, then put it together, record, listen, improve, etc. I can easily invest 30h–60h into 5-minute piece. I am under no illusion that I am proficient enough to play for an audience, but that is besides the point. I enjoy it, and that’s what matters.
Same with photography. During the weekend I was meeting with friends (and their family) and managed to capture some nice moments. Out of ~200 photos, maybe 5–10 actually bring back the atmosphere of that summer afternoon and that is very rewarding for me. I am now at the point that I am not distracted by technical stuff (aperture, exposure, iso, focusing, etc), know my lenses, and can actually pay attention to light and composition.
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I’m probably (almost certainly) my own worst enemy in this regard. I’m a fairly detail-oriented person – if you’ve not already deduced that! LOL – so a vital part of “doing” anything includes all the details. I have a kind of ‘default baseline interest’ in fiddling with lots of stuff, but to truly enjoy it I need to be able to see obvious progress (at least) toward some level of ‘mastery’. (“mastery” is probably too strong of a term, but I can’t think of a better one at the moment)
For guitar playing, learning any fragment of a song required that it sound exactly like (or maybe even better) than the original. Obviously I never reached that point (!!) There are so many, many factors involved in making the original sound as it did that it’s impossible to achieve: Gear, external conditions, all the human elements at the time of recording, etc., etc., ad infinitum. So I was never truly satisfied with my playing and therefore, it was never enjoyable nor therapeutic – just increasingly frustrating.
The same core factors also came into play when I was regularly riding my bike 5 to 10 years ago. Age and fitness levels somewhat aside, I wanted to just be “competent”, i.e., to be able to ride with others of my age (no TdF illusions). But I never really achieved that. I have moderate temporary tachycardia – Any exertion will cause my heart rate to rise significantly (even, e.g., mowing my lawn). It drops quickly – e.g., 40 BPM in five minutes – so it’s not a serious problem but it does go up. I’ve seen as high as 182 BPM riding up a freeway overpass. Typically it would settle around 165 BPM on a flat ride (I was 60 years old at the time, four years ago). A side effect was I’d blow through whatever fuel / food I had eaten and very quickly fall behind. So the group I was with either left me, or was forced to slow down, neither of which I wanted. And since there’s no real scenery where I live, the ride wasn’t enjoyable from that aspect so I quickly lost interest.
Anyway, enough long-winded stories about myself. 
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Yes exactly, you’re setting yourself up for inevitable failure. I don’t get that. Why not set yourself more realistic goals, to make the proficiency gap between your current skill/doability levels and your desired outcome more manageable? It’s a bit like you’re deliberately entering the longest available tunnel and then complain that you can’t see light at the end of the tunnel. Well, take a shorter tunnel then, no?
Getting back to GAS… Sony A6700 just released or Fuji X-S20 for current APC picK…
That’s a legit question, but just as legit is asking, “Why set my goals deliberately low?” I.e., “I’m interested in X, so let’s see if I can be so-so at it…”
That is what you’re currently doing. Your X appears to be achieving world-class-level mastery, which is out of realistic reach. I’m suggesting that you pick a different X, and then totally rock that goal. That is not “being so-so at world-class-level mastery”, rather it is not giving a damn about world-class-level mastery.
It seems like you’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater when you give up guitar just because you unwisely measure your progress against the most perfectly arranged and engineered recordings made by some of the most talented artists in the craft. Or maybe I’m just dumb and happy, that could also be the case. Either way, do it your way, I’ve spoken my piece.
No, in this context my ‘X’ is achieving what might / should be termed basic professional-level competency …never mind that I don’t want to make money from photography. Nothing advanced.
So, one alternate viewpoint and you’re done?
After 45 years, I think I have a pretty good handle on where I was, but more importantly on where I could (not) go. I’d recommend not assuming a comprehensive understanding of a much larger context based on a brief comment.
But at any rate, you’re correct that there’s no sense in continuing this increasingly off-topic sub-thread…
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