You develop taste by looking closely at a large volume of work over a long time, deciding what works and what does not, and paying attention to why. Taste is trained perception. It builds the way physical skill builds, through repetition, and the reps compound quietly for years until you can see things most people walk straight past.
Nobody wants that answer.
I have spent twenty-five years as a photographer, and the most valuable thing I own is my eye. Clients assumed the eye came with the camera. It came from the looking, thousands of hours of it, and I watched the same law hold for every creative I have ever admired.
One move, ten thousand times
When I trained kung fu in Wudang, I watched masters practice a single movement they had been refining for decades.
You learn one move, you repeat it until it lives in your body, and then you add the next one. Nobody there believed mastery was a download. The reps go deeper the longer you stay in them, and a month in that school will cure you of the idea that any real skill arrives quickly.
Seeing works the same way, and we keep pretending it does not.
Every image you study closely is a rep. Every time you compare two versions of a thing and work out why one lands harder, that is a rep too. The eye is an instrument, and an instrument gets built through practice rather than granted at birth.
Feed the eye more than you feed the feed
Most people trying to develop taste are consuming enormous amounts of work and registering almost none of it.
Scrolling past five hundred images trains you in nothing except scrolling. The rep only counts when you slow down on one thing and actually look, long enough to notice what the maker chose, long enough to catch your own reaction and ask where it came from.
So the practice starts with volume of attention rather than volume of exposure.
Study the great work in your field and outside it. Study the bad work too, because working out precisely why something fails teaches you as much as admiring something that succeeds. And trust your own reaction before you check what is trending, because taste that outsources its verdicts never becomes taste at all.
The verdict is the muscle
The part that separates people who develop taste from people who consume a lot is the deciding. This frame over that one. This version out of the forty that were almost right. When I edit a shoot, choosing the one image out of hundreds is where my eye does its real work, and that act of judgment is trainable in a way pure appreciation never is.
Which means you have to make things, and then study your own misses.
Make a lot, keep little, and be honest with yourself about the gap between what you attempted and what happened. The gap is the curriculum. People with developed taste are people who have run that loop, look, decide, make, review, so many times that the judgment became fast and quiet.
Talent gets the credit taste earned
People love the talent explanation, because talent versus taste is a question of whether the seeing can be learned, and the talent answer lets everyone off the hook.
I have met plenty of naturally gifted people whose eye stayed ordinary because they never did the looking. I have watched less gifted people build genuinely refined taste through years of deliberate attention. Talent affects your starting point. The reps decide where you end up, and after twenty-five years around working creatives I trust the reps far more than the gift.
That should encourage you, because reps are available to anyone willing to keep looking.
The machines raise the stakes here too. As generated images flood every feed, the trained human eye, the discernment about which thing is worth keeping and why, keeps getting rarer and more valuable. I wrote about that shift in the deeper essay on the discipline of seeing, which is the longer story behind this answer.
A simple training program
If you want the practical version, it fits in four habits.
Look closely at one piece of work every day, and ask what its maker decided. Keep a file of things that stop you, and revisit it until you can say why each one earned its place. Make something regularly and review your own choices the way you would review a student’s. And slow your consumption down until attention lands, because a hundred glances teach less than one real look.
Do that for a year and your eye will change. Do it for a decade and people will start calling you talented.
FAQ
How long does it take to develop good taste?
Years, honestly, though the compounding starts right away. Taste builds through accumulated reps of close looking and deciding, and most people notice a real shift within a year of deliberate daily attention. The timeline shortens when you review your own work critically instead of only consuming other people’s.
Can taste be taught, or is it natural talent?
Taste can absolutely be developed. Talent affects where you start, but the eye is trained through repetition, looking closely, judging what works, making things, and studying the misses. Naturally gifted people who skip the reps stay ordinary, and ordinary starters who do the reps for years end up with the refined eye.
What is the fastest way to improve your taste?
Slow down your looking and increase your deciding. Study one piece of work closely each day, keep a collection of things that stop you and articulate why they work, and make things you then review honestly. Judgment is the muscle, so practices that force a verdict build taste faster than passive consumption ever will.
Why does taste matter more in the age of AI?
Because generation is now cheap and discernment is not. Machines can produce endless technically polished output, but knowing which thing is worth keeping requires a trained human eye. As synthetic work floods every field, taste becomes the scarce skill, the thing that separates work with a person behind it from work that merely fills space.
Three things to take with you:
- Taste is trained perception. It builds through reps of close looking and honest deciding, and the reps are available to anyone willing to keep at them.
- Deciding is the rep that counts double. Which one is the one, in other people’s work and your own, is the question that builds the eye.
- The reps beat the gift. Talent sets a starting point, and decades of watching working creatives have shown me the attention decides the destination.
I send a weekly note on building a creative life where who you are and how you live are the same thing, and you can join it below.
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You develop taste by looking closely at a large volume of work over a long time, deciding what works and what does not, and paying attention to why. Taste is trained perception. It builds the way physical skill builds, through repetition, and the reps compound quietly for years until you can see things most people walk straight past.
Nobody wants that answer.
I have spent twenty-five years as a photographer, and the most valuable thing I own is my eye. Clients assumed the eye came with the camera. It came from the looking, thousands of hours of it, and I watched the same law hold for every creative I have ever admired.
One move, ten thousand times
When I trained kung fu in Wudang, I watched masters practice a single movement they had been refining for decades.
You learn one move, you repeat it until it lives in your body, and then you add the next one. Nobody there believed mastery was a download. The reps go deeper the longer you stay in them, and a month in that school will cure you of the idea that any real skill arrives quickly.
Seeing works the same way, and we keep pretending it does not.
Every image you study closely is a rep. Every time you compare two versions of a thing and work out why one lands harder, that is a rep too. The eye is an instrument, and an instrument gets built through practice rather than granted at birth.
Feed the eye more than you feed the feed
Most people trying to develop taste are consuming enormous amounts of work and registering almost none of it.
Scrolling past five hundred images trains you in nothing except scrolling. The rep only counts when you slow down on one thing and actually look, long enough to notice what the maker chose, long enough to catch your own reaction and ask where it came from.
So the practice starts with volume of attention rather than volume of exposure.
Study the great work in your field and outside it. Study the bad work too, because working out precisely why something fails teaches you as much as admiring something that succeeds. And trust your own reaction before you check what is trending, because taste that outsources its verdicts never becomes taste at all.
The verdict is the muscle
The part that separates people who develop taste from people who consume a lot is the deciding. This frame over that one. This version out of the forty that were almost right. When I edit a shoot, choosing the one image out of hundreds is where my eye does its real work, and that act of judgment is trainable in a way pure appreciation never is.
Which means you have to make things, and then study your own misses.
Make a lot, keep little, and be honest with yourself about the gap between what you attempted and what happened. The gap is the curriculum. People with developed taste are people who have run that loop, look, decide, make, review, so many times that the judgment became fast and quiet.
Talent gets the credit taste earned
People love the talent explanation, because talent versus taste is a question of whether the seeing can be learned, and the talent answer lets everyone off the hook.
I have met plenty of naturally gifted people whose eye stayed ordinary because they never did the looking. I have watched less gifted people build genuinely refined taste through years of deliberate attention. Talent affects your starting point. The reps decide where you end up, and after twenty-five years around working creatives I trust the reps far more than the gift.
That should encourage you, because reps are available to anyone willing to keep looking.
The machines raise the stakes here too. As generated images flood every feed, the trained human eye, the discernment about which thing is worth keeping and why, keeps getting rarer and more valuable. I wrote about that shift in the deeper essay on the discipline of seeing, which is the longer story behind this answer.
A simple training program
If you want the practical version, it fits in four habits.
Look closely at one piece of work every day, and ask what its maker decided. Keep a file of things that stop you, and revisit it until you can say why each one earned its place. Make something regularly and review your own choices the way you would review a student’s. And slow your consumption down until attention lands, because a hundred glances teach less than one real look.
Do that for a year and your eye will change. Do it for a decade and people will start calling you talented.
FAQ
How long does it take to develop good taste?
Years, honestly, though the compounding starts right away. Taste builds through accumulated reps of close looking and deciding, and most people notice a real shift within a year of deliberate daily attention. The timeline shortens when you review your own work critically instead of only consuming other people’s.
Can taste be taught, or is it natural talent?
Taste can absolutely be developed. Talent affects where you start, but the eye is trained through repetition, looking closely, judging what works, making things, and studying the misses. Naturally gifted people who skip the reps stay ordinary, and ordinary starters who do the reps for years end up with the refined eye.
What is the fastest way to improve your taste?
Slow down your looking and increase your deciding. Study one piece of work closely each day, keep a collection of things that stop you and articulate why they work, and make things you then review honestly. Judgment is the muscle, so practices that force a verdict build taste faster than passive consumption ever will.
Why does taste matter more in the age of AI?
Because generation is now cheap and discernment is not. Machines can produce endless technically polished output, but knowing which thing is worth keeping requires a trained human eye. As synthetic work floods every field, taste becomes the scarce skill, the thing that separates work with a person behind it from work that merely fills space.
Three things to take with you:
- Taste is trained perception. It builds through reps of close looking and honest deciding, and the reps are available to anyone willing to keep at them.
- Deciding is the rep that counts double. Which one is the one, in other people’s work and your own, is the question that builds the eye.
- The reps beat the gift. Talent sets a starting point, and decades of watching working creatives have shown me the attention decides the destination.
I send a weekly note on building a creative life where who you are and how you live are the same thing, and you can join it below.
8/05/26
How Do You Develop Taste? What Twenty-Five Years of Looking Taught Me
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You develop taste by looking closely at a large volume of work over a long time, deciding what works and what does not, and paying attention to why. Taste is trained perception. It builds the way physical skill builds, through repetition, and the reps compound quietly for years until you can see things most people walk straight past.
Nobody wants that answer.
I have spent twenty-five years as a photographer, and the most valuable thing I own is my eye. Clients assumed the eye came with the camera. It came from the looking, thousands of hours of it, and I watched the same law hold for every creative I have ever admired.
One move, ten thousand times
When I trained kung fu in Wudang, I watched masters practice a single movement they had been refining for decades.
You learn one move, you repeat it until it lives in your body, and then you add the next one. Nobody there believed mastery was a download. The reps go deeper the longer you stay in them, and a month in that school will cure you of the idea that any real skill arrives quickly.
Seeing works the same way, and we keep pretending it does not.
Every image you study closely is a rep. Every time you compare two versions of a thing and work out why one lands harder, that is a rep too. The eye is an instrument, and an instrument gets built through practice rather than granted at birth.
Feed the eye more than you feed the feed
Most people trying to develop taste are consuming enormous amounts of work and registering almost none of it.
Scrolling past five hundred images trains you in nothing except scrolling. The rep only counts when you slow down on one thing and actually look, long enough to notice what the maker chose, long enough to catch your own reaction and ask where it came from.
So the practice starts with volume of attention rather than volume of exposure.
Study the great work in your field and outside it. Study the bad work too, because working out precisely why something fails teaches you as much as admiring something that succeeds. And trust your own reaction before you check what is trending, because taste that outsources its verdicts never becomes taste at all.
The verdict is the muscle
The part that separates people who develop taste from people who consume a lot is the deciding. This frame over that one. This version out of the forty that were almost right. When I edit a shoot, choosing the one image out of hundreds is where my eye does its real work, and that act of judgment is trainable in a way pure appreciation never is.
Which means you have to make things, and then study your own misses.
Make a lot, keep little, and be honest with yourself about the gap between what you attempted and what happened. The gap is the curriculum. People with developed taste are people who have run that loop, look, decide, make, review, so many times that the judgment became fast and quiet.
Talent gets the credit taste earned
People love the talent explanation, because talent versus taste is a question of whether the seeing can be learned, and the talent answer lets everyone off the hook.
I have met plenty of naturally gifted people whose eye stayed ordinary because they never did the looking. I have watched less gifted people build genuinely refined taste through years of deliberate attention. Talent affects your starting point. The reps decide where you end up, and after twenty-five years around working creatives I trust the reps far more than the gift.
That should encourage you, because reps are available to anyone willing to keep looking.
The machines raise the stakes here too. As generated images flood every feed, the trained human eye, the discernment about which thing is worth keeping and why, keeps getting rarer and more valuable. I wrote about that shift in the deeper essay on the discipline of seeing, which is the longer story behind this answer.
A simple training program
If you want the practical version, it fits in four habits.
Look closely at one piece of work every day, and ask what its maker decided. Keep a file of things that stop you, and revisit it until you can say why each one earned its place. Make something regularly and review your own choices the way you would review a student’s. And slow your consumption down until attention lands, because a hundred glances teach less than one real look.
Do that for a year and your eye will change. Do it for a decade and people will start calling you talented.
FAQ
How long does it take to develop good taste?
Years, honestly, though the compounding starts right away. Taste builds through accumulated reps of close looking and deciding, and most people notice a real shift within a year of deliberate daily attention. The timeline shortens when you review your own work critically instead of only consuming other people’s.
Can taste be taught, or is it natural talent?
Taste can absolutely be developed. Talent affects where you start, but the eye is trained through repetition, looking closely, judging what works, making things, and studying the misses. Naturally gifted people who skip the reps stay ordinary, and ordinary starters who do the reps for years end up with the refined eye.
What is the fastest way to improve your taste?
Slow down your looking and increase your deciding. Study one piece of work closely each day, keep a collection of things that stop you and articulate why they work, and make things you then review honestly. Judgment is the muscle, so practices that force a verdict build taste faster than passive consumption ever will.
Why does taste matter more in the age of AI?
Because generation is now cheap and discernment is not. Machines can produce endless technically polished output, but knowing which thing is worth keeping requires a trained human eye. As synthetic work floods every field, taste becomes the scarce skill, the thing that separates work with a person behind it from work that merely fills space.
Three things to take with you:
- Taste is trained perception. It builds through reps of close looking and honest deciding, and the reps are available to anyone willing to keep at them.
- Deciding is the rep that counts double. Which one is the one, in other people’s work and your own, is the question that builds the eye.
- The reps beat the gift. Talent sets a starting point, and decades of watching working creatives have shown me the attention decides the destination.
I send a weekly note on building a creative life where who you are and how you live are the same thing, and you can join it below.
8/05/26
How Do You Develop Taste? What Twenty-Five Years of Looking Taught Me
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About the Blogger
I was born in a low middle class conservative religious family in the suburbs of Seattle. Art was and always has been my passion, and more than that a way of life. Starting as a graphic designer, I taught myself photography, built a commercial/editorial business shooting for the worlds biggest brands like Nike, Coca-Cola, Adidas and more. I've also had the opportunity to photograph the world's biggest celebrities like Justin Bieber, Usher, Jessica Alba and more. I've curated a lifestyle around creativity and have learned a lot along the way which I get to share here.
I was born in a low middle class conservative religious family in the suburbs of Seattle. Art was and always has been my passion, and more than that a way of life. Starting as a graphic designer, I taught myself photography, built a commercial/editorial business shooting for the worlds biggest brands like Nike, Coca-Cola, Adidas and more. I've also had the opportunity to photograph the world's biggest celebrities like Justin Bieber, Usher, Jessica Alba and more. I've curated a lifestyle around creativity and have learned a lot along the way which I get to share here.
