Most of life is made up of ordinary moments, and most photography, if it's honest, should reflect that. A handful of well-observed, unremarkable photographs — a quiet room, a familiar hand, a strip of film held to the light — can say more than a single dramatic image staged for effect.
Attention is the actual skill
Technical skill matters, but the ability to notice — to register that a particular ordinary moment is worth a photograph before it passes — is arguably the more important skill, and the one that's easiest to build simply by paying closer attention to daily life.
Document instead of stage
There's a difference between staging a moment to look ordinary and simply documenting an ordinary moment as it happens. The latter tends to hold up better over time, in part because it isn't trying to perform anything — it's just recording something true.
