People who Aren’t Creative Somehow Always End up in Telling the Rest of Us What to Do

I saw a Youtuber talking about photography myths that needed to be debunked, and from my position as a person who knows very little about photography yet still likes to opine with mysterious confidence, I have to say that I agreed with all her points.

1. “Every photo has to tell a story.” Neglecting the obvious exceptions, like passport shots, this is not exactly true. I think the reason people say photos should tell stories is that stories affect us and increase the pleasure photos give us. They evoke emotions we enjoy. Sometimes a photo that can’t be tied to any kind of story has that effect, so it has the power of a story without the story. Also, there are many photos that move us to create our own stories in response. Either way, I think it’s about what photos make us think and feel, not a story per se.

2. “Real photographers shoot in manual mode.” Most professionals don’t, except in unusual situations where they have plenty of time to fiddle with settings. They usually shoot in aperture mode or time mode. If they didn’t, they would lose even more opportunities than they already do. You should be able to shoot in manual mode when it’s appropriate, but other than that, it’s a huge, huge hindrance you will regret.

3. “You have to shoot during the hour of golden light.” This refers to times of day when light comes in from the side and bathes subjects gently. If you play by this rule, you will only get to shoot during two short intervals during the day. It’s pretty obvious that this is a bad idea. It’s also obvious that most great outdoor photos are not shot during the golden hours. It’s great to have the best possible type of sunlight, but it’s not mandatory.

4. “Editing is cheating.” This one is wild. Ansel Adams was a huge editor. Many of history’s great shots were edited heavily. Think about this: film photographers who chose certain films in order to achieve desired effects were editing in advance. They weren’t trying to be accurate; they knew the films they chose would present their work in ways they liked. Shooting in black and white in our colorful world is always a form of editing. Some claim cropping is editing, but when you frame a photo in your viewfinder, you’re cropping the world. “Getting it right in camera” is a destructive goal. The great photographers of history often could not do it, and they lost a whole lot of shots because of it, so why should we do it? As for software, it often allows people to save photos that can then be cherished by future generations. Also, if you shoot JPG, your camera is editing every shot before you get it. If you use software on your computer, you’re just doing what your camera already wants to do, better.

5. “If you want to succeed, stick to a niche.” Maybe this advice comes from people who can only shoot one kind of picture, or maybe it’s intended to help professional photographers set up businesses and clientele efficiently. In any case, for most of us, it prevents us from learning new things, and it cuts us off from a cornucopia of great shots we would otherwise take. If you don’t see in a niche, why would you always shoot in one?

In the comments on the video, just about everyone agreed with the creator. They also told surprising stories about being shamed and ostracized by instructors and photo club members. The commenters used words like “gatekeeping.” Bad, restrictive advice had affected them emotionally and damaged their relationships with other photographers. There are a lot of people out there who would rather stroke their own egos by shaming you than help you succeed. In fact, preventing you from succeeding is one of their goals. When you fail, they feel better about themselves.

These dynamics are found in all areas of life.

My feelings about photography are like my feelings about cooking, except that I am still enthusiastic about photography. I have had bad or mediocre meals in hundreds of restaurants that had highly-trained cooks (including a Marco Pierre White restaurant, a Myron Mixon restaurant, and one run by Mario Batali), but I have cooked a lot of magnificent food with no training. Training can’t always overcome a total lack of aptitude, but ability, humility, and passion can easily overcome poor training.

If you have to stick to rules in order to take photos that aren’t atrocious, the rules make sense for you, but not everyone has your artistic limitations. Sometimes the rule of thirds ruins a photo. Sometimes a level horizon is a terrible choice.

In any case, it’s disgraceful to deliberately stunt other people and kill their joy just so you can pat yourself on the back and tell yourself you’re something everyone knows you’re not. Okay, you’re a good rule-follower. That doesn’t mean your photos are good, although it may mean you can support your family taking wedding and prom photos using formulas.

I’ve been “corrected” by rude people who do bad work for a living. I’ve had people criticize wonderful photos I’ve taken, based on rule-related complaints.

I think I’m right about these things. I can’t see anyone paying me, and the thought of joining a photo club fills me with concerns about battling gatekeepers, but I think it’s helpful for me to know the truth while I enjoy myself in obscurity.

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Since starting this post, I have been to see a professional baby photographer. We are going to pay her to do a session for us. Our visit reinforced my beliefs.

She seems very nice, and I think she will do a workmanlike job of documenting our appearance and our son’s at this age. The photos will look pretty good. There won’t be any big problems with exposure or composition.

That being said, and I don’t mean this in a mean way, they will be glorified passport photos. I put it harshly for my own benefit, because we were shown some very overpriced products today, and I seriously considered buying some. I want to shake myself out of a sentimental stupor before I waste four figures on things we don’t want and won’t use.

We saw a lot of her work today. It wasn’t the kind of thing that gets your emotions going. It wasn’t impressive. Babies wrapped in knitted scarves. Babies posed in front of themed sets. Parents standing by a fence near a pasture. With the exception of one poorly-lit outdoor shot, the pictures were fine. They will do. But nothing made me think, “Wow, this lady is going to take some fabulous shots.” She will take competent documentary shots. I divide photos into documentary shots and artistic shots, and our photos will not be art.

Good enough. This is what we want. I don’t mean that I don’t want our pictures to be blockbusters. I wish they could be, but I can’t find anyone around here to do that kind of work, and I would guess someone like that would charge a king’s ransom. I mean we want competent photos that serve a purpose.

I can see how the “stay in your niche” rule would apply to this photographer. She doesn’t seem to have talent, so she’s never going to hit the big time in the arts or working for major publications. If she tried that game, she would never make it. She will never be able to cover her home’s walls with artistic pictures, to please herself and her family. But she can put your baby behind a birthday cake and take a pretty photo of him lying down on it. She can earn her fees, and people will keep coming back.

We paid $250 for a consultation during which we decided what we wanted her to do. That’s reasonable. The session price was also acceptable. Then we saw the print prices. For a shiny 36″ print of our son on a metal plate made to hang on a wall, she wanted about $3,000. A big box of large prints was also 4 figures. I think a 7 x 10″ print in a matted frame was $190.

I don’t think $190 for a framed print is crazy, but $3,000 for a steel plate is, well…I can’t understand why anyone would buy one. Apart from the price, it looked tacky to me. Also, we should be honest; any print you buy and then hang without glass in front of it stands a great chance of being severely damaged by your child or in a move.

I believe she makes, or tries to make, the bulk of her money from prints. I don’t know if anyone really buys the expensive ones, but maybe some people do.

I doubt she sells a lot of expensive prints, but she certainly has sales tools. The literature for the prints shows them in people’s homes, like 4 prints costing a total of maybe $6,000 over someone’s sofa. “Other people buy these. Are you cheap or something?”

When you talk to a person like this, especially in front of your wife, there is a funeral-director dynamic at work. You know how funeral directors are. “If you want the very best for your mom, we have this Italian figured walnut coffin with white gold handles,” and the price on the paper he hands you discreetly is $25,000. You buy it because your emotions are at high tide, thinking you did a wonderful thing for your family and the inanimate, oblivious dead body your mom used to live in.

Wow. I used the word “dynamic” twice in one post.

When I say “a person like this,” I mean a person who is trying to sell you something in a situation that puts the wind at your back. I am not criticizing the photographer’s ethics. I don’t mean “a person like this sleazy photographer.” She didn’t lie to us or pressure us. She was easy to deal with.

It’s exciting to have photos of your first baby taken, and it’s easy to make a stupid decision when the photographer is showing you pretty albums and nice frames, but at the end of the day, only a hopeless follower lets someone talk him into a $3,000 baby photo which is basically the same thing as a truck wrap.

I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t think we should buy prints at all. I am covering our walls with photos I really love. Next to them, a bunch of mediocre photos someone ground out to make a dollar will look bad. I think the best thing is to buy digital, print them out ourselves, and put them in an album we will never show anybody. I don’t mean we would try to hide them, but realistically, we might go years without even looking at them.

The prints this lady showed us (not on metal or stretched canvas, which is the kind of thing you should only put behind your desk at work) were of very high quality. I guess they were printed on some kind of archival cloth paper, using a pigment printer. But I can make the mats just as well right here, and for the price of a few of her prints, I can buy the printer and use it for other things as well as our baby shots.

I think we should forget about prints. We won’t know what to do with them. We can always change our minds later. In the meantime, we will have the digitals forever or until something bad happens to our files.

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I talked to my wife, and she has been thinking the same things I have. She doesn’t want any prints at all. If we put them on the walls next to our own photos, they will look awful. They will have that perfect studio look, but they will be missing all the ingredients that are personal to this family, and they will be artistically inferior to many of my shots. In fact, they are artistically inferior to a shot my wife took in the parking lot at Costco on auto mode.