Hi folks!
First let me wish you a Happy New Year! May all your dreams come true in 2018!
Back to photography let me add a new article to the series of posts started 2 years ago that express my view on this wonderful hobby and art.
If I were to give another definition to photography I would do it like this: “photography is a way of allowing oneself to experiment and make mistakes”. In my opinion there is no perfect photo. There is always room for improvement. A photo can be good, bad, excellent, breathtaking but not perfect. Perfection is only an ideal and by trying to reach it we get better and better!
Mistakes happen. It happens at shooting. It happens at editing. Or both. Ask yourself: how many times did you take a “perfect shot” and when checking it on the computer you noticed that it’s out-of-focus, blurred or part of the subject had been slightly “trimmed”? How many times did you spend hours editing a photo and then found out there is a setting that can considerably reduce your editing time?
By the way, let me tell you a story from my experience with editing pictures: recently I discovered how to easily remove the backscatter from water. It proves to be a simple process that involves using a Photoshop dust-and-scratches filter and applying a darkening mode. When I tried it for the first time I found out that it only takes 2-3 minutes to do a correction to a photo. This means ten times less than with other techniques I applied before (like Clone Stamp). It’s a huge improvement but looking back into the past I can only ask myself the question: how many hours would I have saved had I known this before? Well, the plain answer is: it doesn’t matter!
Yes, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I learned something and from now on I will save a lot of processing time which I can use for better things like getting out in the field and taking more photos.
There is always something new to learn and to improve. I’ve been in photography for almost 8 years and still think that there is still plenty of room for level up. The important thing is to admit this, to learn from experience and from mistakes and to explore new ways of doing things better. There is huge potential in all this!
To conclude this article I would recommend you to do an “exercise”: from time to time take a quick look at the older photos and compare them to the most recent ones. If the difference you notice is not high enough then maybe it’s time to think some new ways of approaching photography. If the difference is noticeable then well done! However please aware: there is always room for better! Growth should never stop.
Take care.
PS. Check these posts too:
Photo Selection and Other Findings on Editing
What Photography Means to Me (2)
What Photography Means to Me (3)
Call of Nature 
Happy New Year! I wish you a lot of great shots! It’s true that you never stop learning. So, let me recommend a book. It’s one of my favorite books about photography.
English: https://www.amazon.com/Camera-Lucida-Reflections-Roland-Barthes/dp/0374532338/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Romanian: https://carturesti.ro/carte/camera-luminoasa-186871
Thank you Alex!