If you get 1 wish for the new year, 1 resolution to improve your life as a photographer – choose to learn to master the manual mode. Mastering the manual mode will give you the keys to the photographic kingdom. It will make you king or queen and turn your camera into your humble servant.

Overwhelming Possibilities

Many amateur photographers avoid the manual mode. I know I did for many years. It’s really overwhelming. A DSLR camera has endless possibilities. But this also makes it quite intimidating to try your hand at manual mode as an amateur.

Let’s get one thing straight. When I say amateur, I don’t mean unaccomplished, untalented or any other negative “un”-word. I mean someone who loves photographing. Someone who photographs, simply because they can’t not photograph.

Unexplored Territory – Just Waiting to be Explored

As an amateur photographer, you tend to focus on select types of photography and select techniques. In your chosen fields you can become really good. Even match professionals. But there are other areas of photography that you don’t explore. This is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a great thing. Unexplored territory just waiting be explored. So many new techniques to explore, that will enable you to take many more types of photographs. If you learn new techniques, you drastically improve and increase your photographic range.

Capture Your Creative Vision

The biggest difference you can make for yourself as a photographer is to learn to master manual mode on your camera. When you master manual mode, your camera becomes a tool that can capture your creative vision. And it’s a lot more fun to choose how you want an image, than it is to just click in automatic mode and see what your camera chooses for you.

Once you’ve felt the thrill of making a creative choice, setting the camera to do as you please and seeing your vision carried out, there’s no going back. Who wants to be a slave, when you can be king or queen?

So, what do you say? Let’s make 2021 the year when you crack the code to the manual mode and gain the keys to the photographic kingdom