3 of The Worst Pieces of Photography Advice You Can Get
Photos Need to Tell a Story
It sounds deep, but honestly, it’s just overwhelming. In a world where everything needs to have storytelling, photography wouldn’t be left out, right?
Of course, photos with an interesting context can stand out because of it. In fact, I’m currently working on a few projects built around a specific context as I write this blog, and I do believe they have their own value and place.
On the other side, a significant number of the photos I love most in life, whether I took them or someone else did, are clearly not intended to have a deep meaning, even though they might achieve that through their simplicity.
Just stop and think for a second: the challenge of making every single photo you take have a purpose, an interesting and unique story, it’s simply undoable. Photography is visual, before anything else, and visuals can have an impact even if they don’t have a beginning, middle, and end.
Follow Rules For Editing
Some say “if you edit a photo, it’s not a photo anymore”, or “editing is only valid if you do minor tweaks and nothing else”.
Of course, it’s possible to overdo editing to a point where a photo no longer looks like a photo. Especially nowadays, with AI being able to replace the sky, the sea, even the subject itself. Still, the idea of what constitutes sufficient editing, or something that has gone too far, is subjective and extremely personal.
There are areas of photography where not manipulating the photo is something important, or even a rule, such as in photojournalism. There’s also an unspoken rule in street photography against manipulating photos. Even so, I think that in this latter case, the rule can be broken, and the most important thing is to be honest with yourself and with those who are consuming your photography.
In the vast majority of cases, altering colors, contrast, tone curve, and adding grain are a go-to, and it’s because of them that editing is also a way to express yourself. On this matter, bad advice is when someone tries to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do with a photo you’ve taken.
Find a Style soon, and Stick to It
It’s normal to start photography by being inspired by someone. You might follow the footsteps of your favorite photographer, perhaps recreating their method. That kind of connection can even turn into an obsession, possibly resulting in you mastering that style.
This is where the bad advice often comes in: to quickly adopt that style as your philosophy, building an identity and sticking to it. I think this is the result of a mindset shaped by the market, where style becomes a brand and a brand becomes sellable. It sounds reasonable, if you ask me, after all, we can often identify known photographers just by the look of their images.
The problem begins when your entire photographic life starts to revolve around that one style, turning it into more like an aesthetic prison. It’s even more limiting when this happens early on, before you’ve had the chance to explore freely. You often end up trying to look like something instead of allowing yourself to become something.
Last but not least: one overlooked point is that a genuine style leaves space for evolution, when you allow yourself to be wrong and let go of past versions of yourself, experimenting new things. However, if your style was built in a hurry, only to sell, or borrowed from a trend, you might hold onto it, not because it still represents you, but because you fear losing the recognition it brought you.
Food for thought.
Jo.
