Six Things That Successful Photographers Don’t Do

It’s not unusual to hear lists of things that successful people do, but what about some patterns that are destined to hold you back? Here’s a list of six habits that you should do your best to avoid as you progress your career as a creator.

Photographer Evan Ranft has put together this collection of attitudes and thoughts that he believes prevent many photographers and filmmakers from achieving, typically requiring a shift in mentality to allow you to fuel your creativity through positivity rather than negativity.

I’m always wary when photographers ponder a move into the world of NFTs, as many of the issues raised when they exploded into the media spotlight have yet to be addressed. Ethereum still has a carbon footprint similar in size to that of Sri Lanka, and the technicalities of the ownership — such as rights and what happens if a URL breaks — remain uncertain. While NFTs may play a useful role in how digital assets are owned and traded, the marketplace still gives the impression that it is a means of convincing people to turn dollars into Ethereum, thereby inflating its value, and steadily enriching all those who got in early.

What would you add to Ranft’s list? Let us know in the comments below.

Andy Day's picture

Andy Day is a British photographer and writer living in France. He began photographing parkour in 2003 and has been doing weird things in the city and elsewhere ever since. He's addicted to climbing and owns a fairly useless dog. He has an MA in Sociology & Photography which often makes him ponder what all of this really means.

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10 Comments

Can you please just write the six things that successful photographers don’t do? I hate to have to watch a 10 minutes video full of filling words just to learn something that can be read in 10 seconds, and I don’t even understand [over-speeded] spoken English. So what are these six things?

completely with you. Don't have ten minutes to spare to hear six lines. This style of video is dead in the water

Please get to the point. I am not interested in seeing your new place, watching you dressing up, hearing you talking about the weather and seeing you brushing your teeth. No offense intended but this is really not why I clicked on your video. And this is not in line with expectations your video title had set. Stopped watching after seeing you brushing your teeth, could not waste more time on it.

#7 stop making long winded videos full of filler

This site has way too many articles that are simply embedded videos.

People come to sites like this to read, not be given links to a youtube video. It's literally like a 5:1 or more ratio of videos to actual articles.

It didn't use to be this way on here, and I find myself coming here less and less often because of it.

But, do what you're gonna do I guess.

Is the idea of photography, being able to communicate with still images? why is every Fstoppers article a video?

The worst artice I had on the fstoppers page up to now: tons of blah blah, lacking the story line and I lost the interest listening and watching. Help me, what was the message? Come to tje point!

This link sums up articles such as the one above..

https://www.facebook.com/TakingPhotographsIsNotACrime/photos/a.899181160...

They don't make videos for views that's I am pretty sure .2nd they don't post every thing on social media their social media are quiet boring .
3rd they don't share their professional work

Terrible click bait.
Scrolled up and down looking for the list. Absolutely nothing.

Im not going to watch the video.

Removing FStoppers from my feed.
They've done this a few times already. Enough.