“You need to surprise me,” is what Tom Kennedy, former director of photography for National Geographic, said to me as a way for me to improve.

“It doesn’t have to be so much better as different,” Dave Black, one of Nikon’s first Legends Behind the Lens and current Nikon Ambassador, says all the time in his talks to photographers.

It would be best if you learned to crawl before you can walk.

One of the best things you can do to improve your photography is to get on the ground. Get as low as you can to capture a subject.

Sometimes you look up from the ground and are often just getting eye level with the subject, which is shorter than standing.

Look for those birds-eye views of your subjects. I have become an FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot in the last couple of years. The drone has allowed me to fly up to 400 feet above the ground or buildings to get those unique perspectives.

Bill Fortney, who did two books on 500 Feet Above America, was inspired to do the project by the movie Fly Away Home. Bill said, “Every nature photograph I’d ever taken was from approximately five-foot-nine! So I saw how this different perspective gave a fresh look to the natural history subjects I was so familiar with from ground level.”

If you want to improve, bend your needs and reach for the sky.