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Photography combines theory, practice and vision. Vision spells talent, practice - hard work, and theory seals it all together. I believe each component is important, but their distribution in our learning process is even more so.
On theory side, we can go as far as we wish and delve into very complex facts of optics and sensitometry. This however, can quickly wear us down so as to loose interest altogether. There is little point in spending much time on photographic theories, especially in the beginning. We must interupt it with practical excercises.
Practice makes perfect. Knowing equipment we use is very important. The more time we spend on setting up our gear for a shoot and think about its controls, the less we can devote to actually visualizing the scene. Lack of equipment knowledge often leads to interuptions in our thinking process, frustration may set in, and end result may not meet our expectations. So the key is to play with camera controls at leisure, especially so with modern smaller format gear that comes with so many extras that manual is frequently needed. We need to reach a certain level of comfort with whatever it is, we intend to photograph with. Get familiar with film loading process so you won't second guess it at the least opportune time. Equipment operation shuold become a second nature, which will allow you to enjoy practicing of the photographic process that much more. Suddenly you'll find yourself just walking around and contemplating your surroundings at ease. Interesting subjects will seemingly fall into place on their own. Results will keep on improving and the phrase "joy of photography" will have finaly become justified.
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