Contradictions in photography advice

This is at the heart of why so many people overestimate the impact of their photos. They remember being at the Tetons, awake cold and alive at dawn, taking the picture (for example). Or they remember a particular photo session with a model, perhaps someone they knew.

The photographer remembers the moment. But the viewer gets only what is inside the frame of the image.

The crucial thing is that it is totally OK to take pictures for yourself! You don’t need to blow some random person’s mind in order to truly enjoy photography. I think sometimes that gets lost, especially with beginners.

Often people are inspired to take up photography because they loved some images they saw. But delivering that impact to a broad audience is super hard to do. It requires a far more analytical and self-critical approach than most people want to sustain in a hobby.

That point-vs-counterpoint is leaving out a critical difference between cropping vs zoom-with-your-feet: the geometric relation between the foreground and background objects will change.

Cropping is more comparable to a post-processing version of "zoom magnification" at the expense of pixel resolution. Or flipped around, zoom lenses can be thought of as in-camera "cropping" with max pixel resolution but at the expense of crop boundaries being irreversible. The geometric relations between objects are still the same if your feet don't move in both cases. (Edit add for clarity: zoom and telephoto prime lenses are the same for purposes of "in-camera cropping" being compared to zooming-with-feet.)

Zooming with the feet alters how the background looks in relation to the foreground subject -- which may not be your artistic intention. Examples:

https://www.slrlounge.com/glossary/compression-definition-ph...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_zoom

In other words, "zoom with your feet" may get you the wrong composition.

And as with most learning advice, both sides of each argument are great advice. As somebody who is learning a craft, throw a coin and re-evaluate every once in a while.

Using primes or zooms? Using vanilla VSCode vs a highly customized environment? Putting every picture through a raw converter with split toning vs taking candid snapshots? Using copilot vs typing everything yourself? Flash vs natural light? Microservices vs monolith?

All answers are right answers. The whole point is that not knowing an answer to each means that the photographer should explore the topic until they have formed an opinion. No matter how, and no matter where their opinion ends up on.

And naturally, online places tend to attract people of equal experience who discuss each of those topics, without realizing that they're all just taking part in the same learning experience.

use the auto mode and don't worry about it. if you acutally want to have some control then learn the relationship between shutter speed, aperture and ISO. I learned this very long time ago through a Sunny 16 rule on my Leica M6 and outdoors during the day that rule works just fine with today's digital cameras that have 8+ stops of dynamic range anyways.

otherwise photography is about in interesting picture. unless you crop it so much that it's so pixilated that it hurts your eyes no one will scrutinize it or chastise the photographer that they took it with a tripod or cropped it and this article is just a gigantic self serving vent that really doesn't give anyone any better advice on photos.

here's an example of acceptable cropping of a very iconic image: https://i.redd.it/6lpvu9dzkv111.jpg

I thus could consider myself as an experienced advice-reader and advice-evaluator.

My conclusion is that everyone is addicted to bullshit advice that signals about discipline and purity. If you want to get into anything the best approach is to stop reading generalist advice. Either probe it in a spotwise creative fashion on your own or do follow-along practical work flow tutorials. Advice for overall approaches and strategy is a waste of time at best or actively harmful and will undermine your enjoyment

Nothing in photography annoys me more than advice conflating zooming with repositioning the camera. A wide angle lens up close gives a completely different result than a zoom lens from far away.

I've been seeing this awful sentiment for nearly two decades now.

Here's my advice: try everything and try to capture whatever feeling you had in the moment. If you convey the feeling, you've succeeded.

As for lenses, it all depends on what works for you. A zoom used to be my go-to for the longest time, but nowadays I much prefer the prime (a Sigma DG Art). It also depends on what you're taking photos of. Shoot a lot of wildlife and a zoom is your best friend. Shoot a lot of architecture and a prime with excellent distortion correction is far better than most zooms. I just happen to shoot more architecture nowadays, so the prime is what I pack. It's all about using the right tool for the subject.

Most cameras have an option to save both the raw (which depends on the camera make, probably .dng/.cr2/.nef) and also a JPEG using automatic white-balance and exposure options, so you can have the best of both worlds of a quick workflow (using just the JPEGs) or tweaking exposure/balance/tone in 12/14 bpp.

It pays off to develop an intuition about whichever option you choose.

Just personally, I try to limit my max ISO, I do crop pictures, but I do not alter them. Fujifilm has awesome color grading, so I only need JPG. I love my prime lenses and I don't wanna use zoom anytime soon. And all these things were different 5 years ago.

And I've been listening to the whole crop-no crop thing most of my life too. BUt ECB didn't crop! people say (though he sometimes did). I try to shoot to get it 'in camera' as close as I can to what I want, but as the article says, sometimes you just can't. You still get to choose what your final image is going to be. And that's the thing about 'rules' and 'advice'--they're just some guidelines, things to think about, but they're highly contextual, depending on the situation.

So the takeaway is to try things repeatedly and see what works. The article also argues in that direction. Though I think there's much nuance lost in how the article stays in the extremes. The camera I always have with me is not a cell phone but a proper digital camera that fits in my pocket. These are amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Evrm03Y5hI

99% of my pictures are technically fine.

I only use full manual if the picture job needs it.

Most of the time setting the aperture is enough (and the camera allows to set the exposure time and ISO automatically, but set limits which to automatics is not allowed to cross). On the other side action/sport photography is mostly shutter time bound - then the other side around.

And I agree with all of his points. Modern cameras have made people focus more on the technical and less on the art. I sold a photograph I took with a point and shoot Canon A series for $150 multiple times.

However, there are rules that DO help improve the quality of photos, especially if you're a beginner. Then, to move beyond being a beginner, it's good to know how to break the rules (as with any art or discipline).

As a new photographer, I‘m disappointed at how bad most cameras are at HDR. No in-body exposure stacking / combining, no HDR tone mapping, ancient JPEG format with only slow adoption of newer formats. Getting certain landscape shots without a blown out sky is genuinely impossible without post editing (or graduated ND filters, which feel like a workaround to me). Smartphones get this right.

I’m someone who actively dislikes editing, on a computer or elsewhere. I love going outside, I love the challenge of getting a good photo. But once I press shutter, I want to have it. I want it to be fully baked.

I want a camera to be more than just a good sensor + dials. I want it to take good pictures, not just good measurements in the form of a RAW file.

Pretty much all of the stuff being discussed here is meaningless, although a table stakes that every person should learn. The most important thing in photography is learning about light and lighting, how light works, how the camera interacts with light, and how to capture and harness light. Every single thing you see with your eyes, and every single thing you capture with your camera is just a reflection of light off your subject and the subject's surroundings. If you don't understand light, you cannot formulate a composition, and if you can't formulate a composition it doesn't matter what settings you use on the camera, it's not going to be a good photo.

I love the technical aspects of cameras, both film and digital, and I delve very deeply into that myself out of my enjoyment of these aspects, but they're really ultimately not important to the actual art of photography and taking good photos. They're just tools. What matters most is composition. I see a lot of great photos online that are taken with smartphones, and there is nothing wrong with that. I have complicated gear because I enjoy futzing with complicated gear and some of the things I do visually are not possible (easily) with a phone, but for the most part these days I take most of my photos with a phone and some have even been printed and hung in galleries.

There's no reason to worry about any of the meaningless things this article talks about until you understand light, composition, and have figured out what you want to say with that photo. Keep in mind your phone, and any camera you can buy today has more digital resolution than any of the professional grade digital gear available just a decade ago, and in some cases more digital resolution than was available on 35mm film. Even with the revival of film today, you get more stops of dynamic range on a current-generation professional mirrorless camera than you can get on 35mm film.

These technical details basically have ceased to matter within the last 3-5 years, all that matters is composition, storytelling, and lighting.

This has made me lose faith and interest in (most of) photography. While I can't speak for the past, modern photography often feels dishonest to me. Many photographers heavily retouch their images, yet allow viewers to believe that the final result reflects reality.

It would be more honest if photographers acknowledged that their published work is a creative interpretation rather than a direct representation of reality. But of course, admitting this would diminish the "wow" factor.