A method for measuring a photographer's progress over time toward producing images with a high level of aesthetic quality by assessing the aesthetic quality of a set of digital images captured by the photographer comprising: providing a set of digital images captured by a particular photographer, each digital image having and associated capture times captured by a particular photographer; using a processor to compute an aesthetic quality parameters for each digital image in the set; and producing an indication of the photographer's progress toward producing images with a high level of aesthetic quality using the aesthetic quality parameters for each digital image in the set and the corresponding associated capture times.