17 Photography Shower Thoughts to Lighten Your Day

As I stumbled, sleep-drunk, in to my bathroom this morning I had what I would categorize as my first photography shower thought. Ok, I wasn't actually in the shower, but I was near it. I had just brushed my teeth and I was engaging in my ritualistic stare of contempt at my tired face while deafened by the sound of mouthwash roaring around my mouth. As I spat it out I was struck by just how blue it was. I got wondering why mouthwash always tends to be blue or green and it was then my first photography shower thought hit me like an unsecured strobe to the back of my skull.

Mouthwash is blue because it's trying to correct the orangey white-balance of stained teeth.

I have no idea if this is actually correct, but it matters not; the train has left the station. A "shower thought" recently famous because of the Reddit sub by the same name, is merely a sudden realization about something common or trivial. One of my favorites is that the tallest person in the world has experienced being the height of every other person on earth. I began to wonder if there were any more pertaining to photography, and I soon thought of a few more:

Posting one of my images to social media increases my ability to spot previously unseen flaws in it by an enormous amount.

You are, for all intents and purposes, a bipod for your camera.

Whilst still damp in all the wrong places, I hurriedly hobbled back to my desk to man the Googlemobile and embark on an enlightening journey of photography shower thoughts. Between the famous sub-Reddit /r/showerthoughts, a semi-viral article by Matthew Rycroft a few years back, and my favorite comedian, the thoughts began rolling in. Here are some of the best:

1. Before photography, people didn't really know what they looked like as children. - Matthew Rycroft

2. 'Here's a picture of me when I was younger.' Every picture is of you when you were younger.​ - Mitch Hedberg

3. ​The two ends of a panorama are set at two different points in time. - Matthew Rycroft

4. Stock photo models could potentially buy picture frames/wallets/etc. with pictures of themselves already in there. - Graaahh (/r/Showerthoughts)

5. Before color photography, there was no good reason to take photographs of rainbows. - Matthew Rycroft

6. When we see a beautiful painting, we say it looks like a photo. When we see a beautiful photo, we say it looks like a painting. - AlabamaIceMan (/r/Showerthoughts)

7. Before photography, nobody really knew how they looked with their eyes closed. - Chauliac (/r/Showerthoughts)

8. Eventually computer graphics will be so advanced it will be hard to tell apart from photos and professional photography won't be so popular. - DDRammer (/r/Showerthoughts)

9. Black and white photography is usually neither black nor white, but greyscale. - Keltwolf (/r/Showerthoughts)

10. Before the invention of photography and widespread internet, the odds of your marrying the most beautiful woman you've ever seen was actually pretty good. - actually_crazy_irl (/r/Showerthoughts)

11. I wonder if I am unknowingly in the background of people's prized family pictures in their photo albums. - Misterpeople25 (/r/Showerthoughts)

12. If you hallucinate you can use camera phone to distinguish between reality and hallucination. - LongLiveBall (/r/Showerthoughts

13. You may already have the photo taken of you that will be used for your funeral. - OriginalAndre (/r/Showerthoughts)

14. When my parents owned a huge VHS camcorder, they filmed everything. Now that there's a video camera in their pocket, they film nothing. - GlassHouses8 (/r/Showerthoughts

Do you have any you can add to the list?

Lead image by Seth Doyle.