If there's one thing that seasoned professional photographers love to do, it's to dispel ridiculous misconceptions and myths around the craft. Daniel Milnor is one of these people, and in this video, he crushes a few commonly held false beliefs within the wider photographic community.
Many photographers start out with certain false beliefs that they've picked up randomly along the way. Marc Silber, of Advancing Your Photography, sits down with documentary photographer, Daniel Milnor, to discuss some of these potentially career-harming myths, while also offering some valuable advice. The myths range from the concept of greatness in photography, to book publishing, and film photography hipster-ism.
There seems to be one core point to take away from this whole discussion, and that is to create for yourself. Social media has flooded our minds with particular styles of imagery — depending on the respective genre — and subsequently, a lot of photographers are churning out the same, seemingly rehashed stuff. I see it a lot in landscape photography, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that — some of this content is not easy to recreate. Also, I'm as guilty as anyone else for this, as my work could never be described as groundbreaking or great, but that's on me. It's not the viewer's fault for not seeing the creative genius hiding behind that 10,000th photo of a rhino or popular waterfall.
If you just want want to see if you can do a bit better than the next person, and it brings you joy, then fair enough, that's your thing. It's easy to get caught up in the social media bubble, because it can be fun. However, to really separate yourself from the crowd, you have to forge your own path and style. Take inspiration, sure, but use it to create something unique to you and your vision.
These interview-style things are sometimes very hit or miss. This one is AMAZING. Worth commenting alone just to tell people to watch it if they didn't. Fantastic, to-the-point information.
I was sceptical at first, watched a minute or two and wanted to skip it. Thanks to your comment I did not.
This was the hope! I wanted SOMEONE to know this one is worth it!!!! Way to stick it out! And for those catching up here, now, it doesn't take that much...it gets interesting pretty soon...just wait for it. LOTS of great info.
Really good video :-)