Photographers have a tendency to prescribe ways things should be done. But that flies in the face of the beauty of art, doesn't it? Here are some common takes on photography that maybe, just maybe, require a rethink.
Emily Lowrey from Micro Four Nerds leads us through a list of common refrains that photographers make and offers up some of her thoughts on them. While I don't always see eye to eye with all of the takes presented here, there's definitely some food for thought.
Some of the highlights Lowrey mentions, no pun intended, that I hear quite often are "real photographers always shoot in manual" and "photographers shouldn't edit photos."
While manual certainly has its place and there are many times I use it—for instance when I'm doing portraits and need finely tuned control for lighting, macro work for the same reasons, or sports where settings don't really need to change—for other times I'm definitely on one of the semi-automatic modes. As a photojournalist, getting the moment is more important, and so taking out one or two of the parts of the triangle of exposure means less thinking and potential to be on the wrong settings when the moment strikes. I'm usually on aperture mode because background control is first and foremost on my mind in these situations.
When it comes to editing, I'm 100 percent in the editing camp. Cameras provide the starting point, not the ending point, for a finished image, and as Lowrey points out, all of the greats edited their images, sometimes to the extreme as shown in the example that she shared. I definitely agree, though, that editing with AI is one of those red lines; adding elements wholesale or creating images from nothing completely changes the nature of photography, if it can even be called that at that point.
Lowrey offers a few more thoughts on photography myths beyond the two I've talked about here. Check out the video above to hear the other takes, and feel free to leave your thoughts about your own in the comments below.
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