If you, or someone you care about, would like to learn my 12 Best Ways to Learn and Get Started in Photography, then read on. There's even some added bonus tips toward the end.

People, mostly young people, occasionally ask me "how to get started as a photographer." Perhaps the best single answer is "The best way to be a successful photographer today, is to be almost successful as a photograher yesterday."

What that means (to me) is, don't try to figure it all out ahead of time. Just get started early, and do it often. Practice, practice, practice. And one of the best tips for me was, get expert helpful advice on what's not just right with your photos, and not just praise from supporters.

Before posting an easy "Top 12 Ways to Become a Photographer," here's another couple dimensions that I have found universally important. First, how "good" I am in the eyes of someone else is more important than how good I alone think I am. Sure, there's the several photos I take just for personal enjoyment. But as a commercial photographer, it's not what _I_ like, so much as, get this, it's important...it's what's important in the eyes of the consumer/buyer whom my business customer is trying to engage through an advertisement or branding banner or such. The point is, "shoot with a purpose." And decide before you ever point the camera, who is the ultimate most important judge of whether this photo will be "good" (i.e., successful, valuable, enjoyed), and try to begin the shot's journey from capture to editing, to production to delivery to receipt and, finally, to some desired action or mind-state by the true end-consumer.

A second dimension...respect the display and receiving visual systems...their size, strengths and quirks. Will it be displayed on paper? On a desktop screen? Mobile phone screen? Billboard or banner? Framed on a gallery wall? There's a whole series of books that could be written (and learned) on this subject alone.

And don't get me started on the neuro-physics (whatever that is) of the human visual system. It's truly exciting (to me, at least) that with all this complex jigamabob's, artificial IQ algorithms, add-on doodad's and light sources, it all winds up pretty much useless until some human's eyeball glances upon our work, and that ball bounces the received photon impression off to some cortex-whatever enroute to a human brain of some personality, sensitivities and capabilities. Outside of an occasional venture into direct-to-dog bottom-shelf pet shop display, ultimately no photograph is of real value until some human's eye sees our work, and that human's brain and personality processes it. So, my rule is, start early to learn as much as possible about display screens, printing technology, human-eye dynamic range, color sensation, etc.

I suppose we have yet to discover how this whole realm of aritificial intelligence, machine learning, tensor flow, convolutional neural networks, neural processing units, and even Google's Visual Core competing with Secret Apple sauce will assert itself between the human brain and us. In fact, one of the famous scientists, whom I admire (albeit, perhaps now question a bit), recently predicted that during this century "photography" will bypass the human eye enroute to the brain. (Wowser, add that to the fact I've seen some cases where my photography more than once, even bypassed the "brain" part.)

Anyway, in response to a recent request for my advice on "12 BEST WAYS to LEARN and GET STARTED in PHOTOGRAPHY," here is my response.

1. Recruit a mentor to assist or shadow
   
2. Subscribe to blogs by the role models you envy
   
3. Hire a role model once (or more).
   
4. Observe their techniques. Ask 100 questions.
   
5. Start curating your portfolio immediately. Fill it out bredth & depth ASAP.
   
6. Each year replace pics in portfolio older than 2(?) years with recent work. (Like they say, if you don't distain your own photos older than 2(?)years, then you're not improving)
   
7. Subscribe to the YouTube Channels most informative to you.
   
8. Seek critiques early and often.
   
9. Offer free photo shoots in exchange for copyrights ( meanwhile don't quit your day job yet)
   
10. Enter contests, win Awards, start with any level Awards.
    
11. Learn at least one award per year.
    
12. Subscribe to online forums and or professional association forums or blogs that present information of coaching value for business administration, legal and copyright issues, and *genuine* in-person social networking opportunities.

Bonus Tip
With the “Digitization” of photography and concomitant significance of in-camera software, breakout emergence of the many developing realms of in-camera artificial intelligence algorithms, and increasingly rapid evolution of consumer expectations, ​​“photography” has become one of the most wildly evolving technologies ever invented. Therefore, always keep in mind:

“You don't ‘learn’ photography... You chase after it and try to keep up.”