Often I’m asked a question: ‘What is the most difficult thing in the art of photography?‘. Then I reply: ‘Imagination’.
You can look at something, but pre-visualizing how it will look in a photograph, pre- or post-edit, is the big thing. Beyond that, knowing the impact or meaning the photo will be able to have in different contexts is essential, and that requires knowing the background of how photographic images have been used and interpreted across various contexts and cultures. And then there are the basic technical knowledge and skills around exposure, focal depth, focal length, color, resolution, etc. But at the end of the day, those technical skills are less difficult than the seeing and the understanding of how others see.
SunShoot 