"Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly."

This might seem an odd statement in a photography blog: we do want to take better pictures, to get the light just right, to know the camera and "play" it like the musician plays the instrument. Practice makes perfect.

All of this is important, of course. Who doesn't want to take better pictures?

Much of the joy of photography has to do with the subject. While the subject could be a race car, a sunset, or endless pictures of the dog (because he doesn't complain about it), what we really want to photograph well are those we love.

You remember when all we had were paper photographs; photographs that were never associated with computers because we had no computers. The box of pictures in the closet was the answer to the question, "what would you grab on your way out of a burning house?" Today, we take thousands of photographs. We are able to experiment with techniques without any concern for cost or wait of development. In fact, we have so many pictures we loose them among the bits and bites of our hard drives. Ah, the days when all the photographs were in a box in the closet!

So as you get better, don't forget to photograph those you love, even if you do a poor job of it. Too soon will the young grow up; too soon will the strong become weak; too soon will the old leave us. Then we will not care if the photograph had good bokeh or that the light was just right: we will just look and remember.