Did Our Post On ‘Morning After’ Photography Go Too Far?
Earlier today Lauren wrote a humorous, opinionated, post about ‘Morning After’ Boudoir Photography. This post was met with great hostility and inappropriate personal attacks towards Lauren. Is Fstoppers too big now to have a voice? Are we only allowed to report news stories without expressing opinions? Did we go to far or did commenting get out of hand?
I started Fstoppers with Patrick less than 3 years ago and since then we have grown to something much bigger than I had ever hoped. We now have a huge team of talented writers and receive over 2 million page views each month. Patrick and I have given our writers freedom to basically post about whatever they like whether that is a standard re-post or a entertaining original opinion piece.
What started all of this?
If you didn’t read Lauren’s post, she basically claims that she is against ‘morning after’ photography because people are sharing these pictures on Facebook and then hanging them in public places around their homes. She specifically says she doesn’t have a problem with the pictures in general, she just believes they should be private:
“In this video from Good Morning America, the bride states she plans to have the images framed and put up all over their room. I honestly don’t see anything wrong with doing that – your bedroom should be your sacred place for just the two of you. The room and all its decorations are just for you and your significant other. What I can’t grasp is why you would want something so sacred to be strewn all over the internet for your coworkers, perhaps boss, friends, and relatives to see.”
Whenever you write an opinion piece like this you are going to have some people who agree with you and others that do not. It appears that in the case of Lauren’s post, the majority of readers disagreed with her. However, the most interesting part to me is to see how people respond to articles they don’t agree with. Let’s first look at an opinion piece that I recently wrote that the majority of people DID agree with: Why Bad Wedding Photographers Have Made The Industry Better. Aside from a few people on Facebook who claimed they would never come to Fstoppers again because I was being “mean” (I’m not sure they actually read my article), the majority of comments were very positive: “Great post, Lee. One of the better ones I’ve seen on this topic/issue” “Awesome post!!!”, “Thank you so much for writing this Lee.” “Damn, you guys have been cranking out some seriously good reads. Thanks Lee.” “Can we please have more articles about photography and less op-ed pieces from the office manager?” “Sorry but this article is total crap… People have eluded to this above but, I’m just going to come out and say it. This is NOT what I visit FS for.” “You are most definitely a prude. You are also being very judgemental of something that clearly doesn’t affect your target market. Whatever the client wants, there will most certainly be someone willing to take pictures of it and get paid for doing so. For you to say that a bride is “vain and self-loving” for wanting steamy photos of herself and the one she loves is honestly horrible and downright nasty.As for some critique of your portfolio, I find out-of-focus, grainy, shots with crooked horizons to be more offensive since your clients probably paid you for your time.”
Nobody wrote anything like “I don’t come to Fstoppers for opinions, why don’t you stick to news.” Why? Because the majority of people agreed with me. Now let’s look at the responses to Lauren’s post in which more people disagreed with her. Here are a few of the comments that stood out to me:
I want to make it clear that disagreeing with a writer and making a comment about it great, we want you to do that. I LOVE respectful debates and also appreciate when someone can sway my opinion by making a great argument. I simply want to point out how quickly things can get out of hand when people disagree with something they read online. Maybe you thought that Lauren was disrespectful towards those who do enjoy this type of photography or she was unfair to the photographers who are hired to shoot these jobs, that’s fine! I would probably agree with you. Writing that in the comments would make your point. Attacking Lauren personally or opinion pieces in general is not a way to argue nor behave, in my opinion.
Most people only comment if they have something negative to say
One of the most frustrating things about running Fstoppers (or anything on the internet) is that most people will not comment unless they are mad and have something negative to say. My post about bad wedding photography has been viewed 20,000 times now and has 28 comments. Lauren’s post has been up for only a few hours and has been viewed 9,500 times and has 60 comments. The other unfortunate thing that you have to remember is that controversy sells. Lauren’s post will probably become the most popular post of the entire week BECAUSE so many people commented negatively about it and then other people decide to comment to attack the attackers in the comments. Our most popular post of all time was The iPhone Fashion Shoot and the controversy of that post made it successful. People LOVE to tell me how terrible of a photographer I am and how I am lying to people about gear not being important and then there are others that LOVE to attack those commenters and stick up for me. The sad truth is that I bet the majority of people who read Lauren’s post DID agree with her and then they moved on to the next post. In many cases it’s only the people who take offense to an article that have the energy to write a comment.
All of that being said I want everyone to know that we really appreciate each of you being readers and our goal is not to offend any of you but with around 500,000 different photographers coming to our website each month, we are bound to ruffle some feathers. Please take 5 seconds and check a box in the poll below so that we can get a realistic idea of our readers opinion of Lauren’s post.
