I love learning.

I still watch photography videos. I read articles. I look at lighting diagrams. If somebody shows me a technique I haven’t tried before, there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to be interested in it.

But there’s something I’ve learned over the years:

Reading about photography and doing photography are two very different things.

If I see a lighting technique I like, I don’t just save the video and think, That’s pretty cool.

I want to go try it.

I’ll set up the lights. Move them around. Change the power. Change the angle. Try a different modifier.

I’ll make mistakes, figure out why something didn’t work, and keep adjusting until I understand what’s actually happening.

And eventually, I usually change it anyway.

Because I’m not necessarily trying to learn how to shoot exactly like the person in the video.

I’m trying to figure out how to make the technique work for me.

Recently I photographed a cheer team outdoors on a day when the temperature was around 102 degrees.

There wasn’t much relief from the sun.

We were working in direct sunlight, I was using strobes to balance that sunlight, and all of the equipment was sitting out there baking right along with us.

Eventually my DJI Pocket 3, which I normally use to grab behind-the-scenes video, decided it had enjoyed enough Georgia summer and overheated.

No more BTS video.

Okay.Not ideal, but the session keeps moving.

Then my Nikon Z7II stopped cooperating with the flash.

Now we have a slightly bigger problem.

I still had athletes waiting on me. The light hadn’t gotten any easier.

And it certainly hadn’t gotten any cooler.

Telling everybody, “Sorry, my camera isn’t cooperating,” wasn’t going to get the pictures finished.

So I switched cameras.I grabbed my Z6III, got everything working together again, and kept shooting.

I was around f/8, ISO 100 and 1/160 second, staying below my normal flash-sync limit instead of jumping into high-speed sync and asking even more from the lights in those conditions.

My AD600 was already working hard to compete with that sun.

Was it the equipment combination I had originally planned to use?

Nope.

Did it matter?

Not really.

We finished the session.

That’s one of the biggest things experience has taught me.

Practice doesn’t just teach you how to create a photograph when everything goes right.

It gives you options when something goes wrong.

You begin to understand what settings you can change and what you can leave alone.

You know which piece of equipment can substitute for another.

You understand what your lights are capable of because you’ve actually pushed them before.

You know what happens when you move a light farther away because you’ve done it — not just because you’ve read about what should happen.

And you’ve made enough mistakes when nobody was depending on you that you’re a lot less likely to panic when somebody is.

That knowledge is hard to get from a book.

None of this means books, classes or videos aren’t valuable.

They absolutely are.

Someone else can show you an idea in ten minutes that might have taken you months to discover on your own.

But I think the learning really begins after the video ends.

Go outside and try it.

Set up the light.

Take the picture.

Look at what happened.

Change something.

Take another one.

Do it on a hot day. Do it after dark. Try it in a gym. Try it in a tiny room.

Try it with one light instead of three.

And occasionally create something absolutely terrible.

That’s part of it too.

Reading about a technique teaches you how someone else did it. Practicing it teaches you how you do it.

And after enough practice, when you're standing outside in 102-degree heat and two pieces of equipment decide they're finished for the day...you don't have to stop and wonder what the book says to do next.

You just keep shooting.