One of my great heroes of modern photography is David DuChemin. In a world caught up in mediocre photos and marketing messages that make us believe the newest cameras make better photos for us, we have David. As a great writer and teacher, David is trying to teach us to see beyond how to take a photo and into how to make a photo.
I really can't recommend his books and workshops enough. Grab the RSS to his blog!
From one of his latest books, Making the Image:
“Truthfully, I wrote this book because I’m running out of the more conventional ways to teach photography and I keep beating my head against the juggernaut of the popular photography world that keeps implying, if not outright saying, that better cameras make better photographs. Bullshit. They make bigger photographs. Sharper photographs. But humanity doesn’t need sharper photographs. We don’t suffer from a lack of sharpness. Our cameras are plenty sharp. We suffer from a lack of visual literacy, from a lack of imagination, from a lack of a willingness to engage deeply and vulnerably with our subjects.”
"Visual literacy" and "imagination" and "engage deeply," yes, this is good stuff. We do lack in visual literacy, which includes the how we make photographs to how we read them. It goes both ways.
I have, and probably will again, get caught up in having G.A.S (gear acquisition syndrome) about bigger cameras with more megapixels. As one small rebuttal to David's point. The greater richness and detail I get with my Nikon D810 is unrivaled. On the other hand, I love my Fujifilm X-T1 equally and for different reasons. Non-of-which have to do with sharpness. But that wasn't really his point.
Making the Image is a simple book, but a welcome one for those looking to engage more deeply.
And, check out Photographer's Soul while you are at it...