I have always wondered about what it took to make certain images, back before I knew anything about photography. Now I know.
The process of getting to the final product is different for everyone but what it takes to get to the final product is time. It takes time to understand what you are looking at, time to think about your next step in the process, time to wait on the feedback from your most trusted critics and time to actually edit.
Take this photo up top for example. It shows three iterations of one photo, from the press of the shutter to the export from photoshop. When I took this photo I had no idea what I was going to do to it. It was something casual that was shot in the afternoon in a class room while sitting and joking with friends. Transferred it over to my phone, threw on some black and white, added some fade and called it a day. (Side note, photoshop mobile, lightroom mobile and the vsco apps should not be slept on. They are so powerful that I use them frequently along side my desktop and laptop when it comes to my full editing process.)
It wasn't till earlier today while looking at the photo for a 5th or 6th time that I realized the full potential of this shot. With some feedback from Godfrey2k, check out his website Godfrey2k.com, I then sent the photo over to my laptop to attempt a makeover. Cropping here, layers here, shadows, masking and all those things showed me final product which well exceeded my initial thoughts for the shot. It took some time for me to see what the shot was about and the character that it possessed along with the right way to edit it.
So this brings me to the point that photography is not just about clicking the shutter button. It's about what happens in the time between the press of the shutter to the final export.