Don't Listen To Me Or Anyone Else!
Earlier we asked our readers in the Your Photo Tips.com Flickr Group to give us some of their best one sentence photography tips and we had a great response! For the next few weeks I’ll be elaborating, in my own words, what those photo tips mean to me and how they can help you become a better photographer. So if you missed the original post you can find it at 16 Quick Tips For New Photographers.
Because this will be an ongoing series this will be where I tell you to bookmark the website or subscribe to our feed so you don’t miss the upcoming posts!
Don’t Listen To Me Or Anyone Else!
matt_cinque wrote a simple statement
don’t listen to me or anyone else
It’s hard to gauge exactly what Matt was specifically meaning when he said that, but here’s my take.
As photographers, whether you are a photographer by trade or hobby, we are often open to criticism. That’s actually true of any art form really. In truth we look for criticism and help.
Photographers tend to have a thirst for both knowledge, critique, assurance, and for help. These rather technical little boxes we carry around can give us fits and what does that button do anyway?
That’s why there are an abundance of websites and blogs dedicated to sharing the love, knowledge, and scope of our work.
You can post your images on Flickr or any other forum and get feedback on your images. Ask questions and your bound to get answers.
You can spend countless hours googling photography questions and come up with an array of answers from any number of websites.
But why bother?
Why not go out there with your camera and just take pictures of what you like?
Why not just look at images you like and emulate those styles instead of being told what is good photography?
Why listen to anyone at all?
I think Matt’s point was that you just have to do what you like regardless of whether or not some bozo on the Internet says your supposed to do that.
Just do what you like.
Of course I could have it all wrong.
What do you think Matt meant?
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Comments
Sounds like a paradox to me. Follow all of the "rules" and your photos will look like all the others. Ignore the all of the rules and you will likely make some silly mistakes. My theory has always been to know the rules well enough to know when the can be bent or broken.
@ Brent - That is certainly a way to look at it. Often times (although probably not often enough) I try to express those exact thoughts. Knowing how and when to break the rules will take your photography to a much higher level.
But you do have to know some of the rules first or you're just kinda getting lucky (to put it crudely).
Ditto!
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