"There is no spoon" heartyfisher.

Does that mean you are levitating smaller objects with a glance ? .. or maybe you are just seeing things.. .. Try staring at goats for practice.

I need to look at more Great Photos .. Got a book recently called "Colour Photography" real old and there is a whole chapter are talking about all kinds of colour film and labs ... but there were nice discussion and breakdowns of each image and there were at least 2-4 images per page.

New camera will help too :-)

The list is long...

But to agree with some other posters, practicing with the camera I have and learning all of it's abilities and limitations is important.

From an artistic point, I need to do a better job of getting pictures to reflect "place". I often get a good picture of an object or subject, but there is no "place" that it is occupying. That makes the picture not work. Looking at great photos there is always that sense of place that immediately lets you know what you are looking at and the meaning it has within the picture.

I've been practicing trying to levitate larger objects with just a stare. I definitely need more room for improvement there.

That's most likely why you don't have enough. :-p

Money is the only thing I'm concerned about.

Seem like a hard question to answer, but I find the answer is simple. I need to get out and practice more, there is always room to improve technique. Another area is being willing to shoot in different weather conditions, that is an area that I have improved in somewhat, but I know that I could be missing some great shots because I don't feel like going out in a rain storm. How to improve that? Get some rain gear for myself and go out on the rainiest day I can.

I would also love to have more choices in terms of lenses, there are times when I just cannot get the photos I want because my telephoto lens is F4, and the light gets to low to get the shutter speeds I need. When you cannot get the shutter speed you need at ISO1600 in the middle of the afternoon, you know you need faster glass and/or an FX camera! I also would like another lens, because my telephoto lens is a fixed prime, which means I get excellent results, but there are times when I limits how creative I can be with my shots. Solution, save my money and get what I need to remove the limits on my creative abilities.

Post production for sure. I do 0 post production, and it's a blaring weakness. I have Photoshop CS2, it's just that I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Great question! I need to better anticipate the moment and to be aggressive enough to capture it. I need to think quickly on my feet and always be ready so that if a moment is happening, I will have already planned for the shot by scanning my environment.

Well I would like to say a $2000 lens would solve all my problems, but I think I could stand to learn more about the proper settings and what to use when. I usually go about trying to learn what settings will be best, but I find it hard to just sit down and read a book on what does what. I usually take pictures first then ask questions later when they stink :)

Ability. I have just come back to photography with my D5000 and am determined to take at least a few pics that are good enough to hang on my wall before I am too old and weak to press the shutter. Fitting it in with everything else and not having that fearsome ability to soak up new things that you have when you're young means that achieving my goal isn't easy!

How will I improve? Wear out a few shutters I guess. I'll worry about equipment upgrades when I take pictures that are artistically good enough that it is the equipment that is holding me back (yeah, right - that'll never happen!).

Here's a post meant to stir up some reflection on the forum.

I've always loved looking at problems in terms of process. Specifically, I like to look for a bottleneck, improve that aspect of the process, and repeat. (Oh, no—not another modular DSLR thread! ;-)

So what's holding you back as a photographer: equipment, technique, knowledge, or what? Extra credit if you say how you plan to improve.

I'll go first. I would really like to be better at timing shots and noticing details when I'm taking pictures. I don't naturally notice things at first glance (just ask my wife about how I react—or don't—when she gets her hair cut). It would be nice to see if a subject's hair isn't looking perfect while I'm at a photo shoot, for example. As it is, I'm trying to improve by noticing (haha) that I have that flaw and making sure that people I'm taking pictures of are aware. I've taken to asking brides to bring someone along, like her mom or a sister, who can be in charge of making sure the dress and hair look perfect. I'm kind of the same way about expression. I fire off a string of pictures and choose one in post processing that I think best captured the moment, but I'd really like to practice timing shots and learning to anticipate the moment better than I do now. The two ideas I've come up with is to 1) use my own camera and pretend I've got a view camera with a film holder that I have to load between shots (so about one frame every three seconds instead of 4.5 frames per second) or 2) get an actual view camera and practice with that.