Gear has never been better. Autofocus is smarter, noise is lower, and sharpness is almost a given — yet scroll through Instagram or any photo forum and everything starts to look the same.
Coming to you from Peter Forsgård, this sharp and practical video breaks down seven specific reasons your photos might be blending into the crowd. Forsgård opens with one of the most honest observations in photography right now: algorithms are shaping your taste without you realizing it. When you chase likes, you unconsciously push your work toward whatever the average social media user finds pretty, which pulls you away from your own voice. Forums do the same thing: dominant voices in critique communities quietly steer everyone toward a shared aesthetic. Forsgård's advice is blunt: stop making images for the heart button and start making the images you actually want to make.
From there, he tackles presets and smartphones. Most of what you see on Instagram was shot on a phone, processed by color science an engineer decided for you, and it all ends up looking alike: oversaturated, clean, and technically flawless but stylistically flat. If you're shooting on a phone, Forsgård suggests finding an app that shoots raw files so you can edit on your own terms. He also calls out the habit of visiting "Instagrammable" spots and shooting from the marked location — an experience that makes a great personal memory but rarely produces a photo that resonates with anyone else. There's a real difference, he argues, between an image worth sharing with your family and one worth putting in front of a wider audience.
Two of the most useful points in the video involve how you think about composition and risk. Forsgård challenges the reflex to hunt for leading lines, golden hour light, and textbook rule-of-thirds setups. Those things are clichés for a reason, but if that's your primary filter for what's worth shooting, you're missing moments, gestures, and genuine emotion — the things that actually make a photograph stick. He's equally direct about the fear of making ugly photos. Polished, mistake-free images are for advertising. If you want your street work to mean something, you have to be willing to photograph what you feel, not what looks clean. The remaining points in the video cover the difference between obsessing over technical "how" versus understanding your "what" and "why," and the problem of never staying with a subject or location long enough to develop a real body of work. Forsgård also shares a practical exercise involving a Canon Selphy compact printer that reframes how you evaluate your own work in a surprisingly effective way. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Forsgård.
2 Comments
I have noticed that much of the work here does look all the same. Perhaps editing with complex presets isn’t working out so well.
I've known musicians who never listened to music from their own genre just to not be influenced.
I'm not saying this is the right way, but I find the idea interesting. Especially because it's the opposite of of these "follow" times. It's a bit drastic but it has my sympathy.