Ever feel overwhelmed with information?

[Patrick Janka]

I guess I can blame this on the information age, but I'm trying to learn as much as I can as fast as I can in the worlds of videography and photography, but it's incredibly tiring with the endless amount of resources available. I spend most of my free time watching tutorials and reading books on these subjects. I have Firefox open with one tab open to a Lynda.com tutorial on Adobe Premiere, another tab with Video Copilot After Effects tutorials, another tab open on external flash reviews, a YouTube tab on fashion photography lighting, a tab on B&H of reviews of boom poles, a dvd on film directing on windows media player, pdf tutorials, forums, etc etc etc. It's maddening. Do you ever feel like you'll never be able to learn it all or ever have enough equipment?

[Erwin van Dijck]

Information overload can happen pretty easy these days. Take your time, don't rush, slow down, make a plan, pick only a few. There are more reviews and tutorials on the internet than you can read in a lifetime. And your brains need time to process everything.

In time you will be able to better shift through all the online information.

And don't forget to go out shooting, away from your monitor, that's where you learn the most valuable lessons.

regards,
Erwin van Dijck

[Don Bloom]

Sure the amount of information can be mind boggling but at some point you just have to stop reading and pick up the camera and start shooting. Anything, doesn't matter. Learn the controls of the camera until you can not only reach everything but change it with your eyes closed and know exactly what you did. You need to know the gear like it's the back of your hand. When shooting a job especially a live event, everytime you stop to think about what you're going to do the opportunity has passed so the better you know your gear the easier it is to make adjustments on the fly.
Find the 1 or 2 shoots you've seen that you want to try to emulate, keep practicing until you feel happy and comfortable with the results and then move on to 1 or 2 more.
Remember there isn't anyone that knows it all, knows how to do it all or would do it all on a live event show. You do the very best you can and try to get better everytime.
Good luck and most of all have fun