In photography, there's always a tension between control and immediacy. On one side, you have post-production, refinement, and the ability to shape an image long after it's been captured. On the other, there's the raw act of photographing in real time, where decisions are irreversible.
"Dogma 11" sits firmly in the second camp.
Please note: The meaning and intention of this article should be easy to interpret, but in order to avoid the misunderstandings that I experienced on social media for a similar topic: here I propose not really dogma and rules to be followed, but rather that limitations, perhaps self-imposed, can sometimes teach us a lot and help us shape our creativity, taking photographs with greater intention and presence. As a photo coach, I don't give rules in my workshops, let alone in a social media post.
It is a set of constraints designed to limit intervention both in the moment of capture and after the fact. Not as an attempt to define what photography should be, but as an exercise in what happens when you remove as many variables as possible once the shutter is pressed.
Inspired by Dogme 95 in cinema, there are different versions of Dogma 11 in photography.
The Rules of Dogma 11
- Do not crop the image
- Do not digitally alter the photograph
- Do not add elements to the scene
- Do not remove elements from the scene
- Do not stage or direct situations
- Do not use artificial flash
- Use only available light
- Do not reconstruct the image in post-production
- Do not alter the relationship between what was seen and what is shown
- Do not intervene to "correct" reality
- Photography must reflect what happened
Whether you agree with it or not, it raises a familiar question: how much of a photograph should be made after the moment it was taken?
Taken at face value, these rules are strict. In practice, they function more as a framework for discipline than a literal prescription for every photographic situation.
What This Approach Is Really About
Dogma 11 is not concerned with aesthetics, style, or genre. It is concerned with process.
By removing cropping, heavy post-production, and staged intervention, the photographer is forced to make decisions earlier and accept them later. Composition, timing, and anticipation become central again. There is no safety net in post.
This approach also challenges a very modern habit in photography: the idea that the "real" image is something that can still be constructed after capture.
In this sense, Dogma 11 aligns more closely with documentary instincts than with contemporary image-making practices that rely heavily on refinement and reconstruction.
Criticism and Limitations
Of course, these rules are not universally applicable.
Commercial work, editorial assignments, and many forms of contemporary photography often require post-production, retouching, or controlled environments. Even within documentary practice, absolute restrictions can become impractical.
And that's where Dogma 11 becomes more interesting as a provocation than as a doctrine.
It is not designed to replace existing workflows. It is designed to interrupt them.
Why Constraints Still Matter
There is a long history in photography and art of using constraints to sharpen vision. From fixed focal lengths to film limitations, from contact sheets to contact with physical processes, limitation often produces clarity.
Dogma 11 belongs to that lineage.
It forces a return to fundamentals: timing, presence, attention, and decision-making in the moment.
In a time when nearly everything can be adjusted later, the value of an irreversible decision becomes more relevant, not less.
Final Thought
Dogma 11 is not asking to be accepted as a standard. It functions better as a challenge.
A reminder that photography still begins at the moment of capture, and that everything after that moment is interpretation, not correction.
Whether you follow it or not, it leaves a simple question behind:
How much of your photograph do you actually want to decide after it has already happened?
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21 Comments
It always varies from image to image but I generally give equal weight to capture and post-processing. Sometimes I see the final image in my mind at the time I click the shutter, and those images have very little editing beyond bringing out color and contrast in the RAW file. Other times, it's sort of a vague idea from the start and I'll make extensive edits in Photoshop. Sometimes I take the image a whole different direction in post-processing than I had first thought with my camera in hand. Final decisions are always made in Photoshop, never the camera. In my opinion, the best 20th century photographers like Ansel Adams allowed the darkroom to play a critical role in his expression of the print.
I'm not hesitant to make a composite from layers where the situation calls for something beyond the capacity of the camera. The quality of this Milky Way image would have been impossible to produce, given my ancient Nikon D800 camera, in one exposure. So the rocks were shot about 7:00pm in order to get good shadow detail, and the stars at about 11:00pm. I don't like images that are so over-processed to the point of looking like AI, surreal, or suspiciously fake elements. Sky replacements seem particularly abused with today's software. I like for my images to look natural, even if they're extensively edited.
You know, when I was a kid growing up in Los Angeles, I remember being able to look up into the night sky and see the Milky Way. Over time, the Milky Way started disappearing, and you could barely see any stars...then, later around 1970, we moved up to the High Desert and the stars all reappeared, and overtime, again, they all disappeared...
I remember traveling to Los Angeles as a teenager with my parents in 1968 for their 25th anniversary. What a wonderful place, I remember thinking. It was in the month of April when the weather was just perfect. About ten years ago, I was in LA on a business trip and thought, wow the traffic here is horrible and the smog so bad you could hardly breath... what a miserable place.
I agree...it was the 60's for me, lived down in Southern CA - Never again!
I respect your process idea and your workflow. We start, I think, from 2 different perspectives. My "imprinting" with photography happened in a way that all over my career is a continous reptition of that simple workflow, of course with the differences that digital imposed. And of course the landscape photographer approach is usually different form a documentary photographer.
I'm sure we both start and finish an image coming from two different places. You are undoubtedly capturing genuinely authentic moments with real people and real situations. You can not afford to distort or fake the elements in your photographs or it totally undermines the credibility of your work. From the list, I'm guessing that you might crop an image, maybe a slight edit of color and contrast, but that would be the limit of your computer editing. I would be shocked if you added or removed elements that did not actually exist. We photograph for different reasons.
Photography was invented and preserved over time as the "honest" medium. I think people still view a photograph as relatively more honest than something along the lines of computer generated graphics, or even a painting. That's changed a lot with Photoshop though. No going back. We each must decide how the tools we have serve our purpose. Back to the question of: "What is photography for?"
Yes, i confirm my work is pretty straight photography most of the time. Of course, not removing or adding anything. Even fro the crop: I do it, mostly when it comes to editorial work. But for my street photos I keep them 99% as made in camera.
I realize cropping the photograph after it was shot, or framing the subject according to your wishes from the moment of capture, is essentially the same thing. We decide at one time or another what to include, and maybe more importantly, what to exclude from the larger scene in its entirety.
In landscapes, we exclude distractions in order to maintain focus on the subject. In documentary work, excluding background elements can change the accuracy of the story of what was really happening at that moment. Photojournalism can still include or exclude the elements of a picture to fit the desired narrative of the photographer. In other words, the elements contained in the photo may be real, but the story is a lie. Would you agree? If so, honesty is a matter of integrity rather than a code of rules applied to one's workflow.
Look: at a certain point of my learning path I joined the straight photography, to which the original street photography was based in its approach. I studied Henri Cartier-Bresson, and his fundamentals particularly influenced me. And even if some of his photos were cut during the editing process, it wasn't him who did it; he maintained that a photo should remain as it was when it was taken, so as not to lose a certain aura. In 2013 Leica Camera AG hired me as a photographer and their guidelines for the assignment required to "leave the photo as made in camera". Already that time I was not a photographer cropping that much, but after that work I made it as a personal mantra. Street Photography to me is a school and gym to learn, improviing and getting a better photographer. And I believe that I am now a better photographer thanks to this approach. That is mine and not pretending others do that. There is also the imprinting: I started to make photography in the film era. I never made an experience in developing my rolls: I always trusted in my photolab, and used to see what it was the result of the photos, almost as it was at the moment of pressing the shutter button. That is, for me. "What I see is what I get, most of the time. That's me. Is photography a lie? Yes...and not. Maybe you inspired a new piece to propose to fstoppers.
The content of dos and gon'ts sounds heavily like the Chicago statement on biblical inerrancy rather than being related to photography.
The way they are stated direct heavily in direction of dogmas and red lines not to be crossed.
While the target you set behind to educate the perception I share. Applying such limitations as a challenge, project, what ever can make sense. I just would rephrase them to get out of the burnt religious corner
It is written like that becauseinspired from the Dogma 95 of cinema, as I said. And it should keep that form. But I am happy you get it. I found on social media people even insulting me for this.
I take photos to show and document what I find and see. I try to make my photos look as close as I can to what was in front of me. Because to me, shades of light brown or gray can be incredibly beautiful. The problem that I see is that in Dogma 11 (for me 10, what's the deal with no cropping? It's nearly impossible to always be in a perfect position and distance.) is that within the photo community is that these photos aren't appreciated and "need work" in order to be more dynamic with false but very vibrant colors that don't exist in the real world.
I think we all agree that Dogma 11 is not religion but just to improve as photographers by limiting the options, because limitations can push our creativity: Dogma 11 isn't about replacing subtlety with exaggerated colors or turning reality into something more "dynamic." Quite the opposite. The idea is to accept responsibility for what happens in front of the lens instead of fixing it afterward.
If a scene is built on delicate grays, muted browns, or soft light, then that's exactly how it should be photographed. Those tones can be incredibly expressive without any artificial enhancement.
As for cropping, I understand why many photographers see it as an essential tool. The no-crop principle isn't meant to claim that cropping is inherently wrong. It's a discipline that forces you to refine your position, timing, and framing before pressing the shutter. It's challenging, and it's certainly not for everyone, but that's precisely the point. Thanks to not cropping I improved as a photographer.
Sometimes I have a perfectly composed photo but when I have it printed, it ends up NOT how I want it because in order to frame it, often the edges are covered by the matting!!! So there! :-)
Why do you have to cut off edges to have a print framed?
There are for example canon entry level DSLR (eos 300d, 700d)with less than 100 percent view in the viewfinder. (If that has changed with the latest mirrorless line, no clue. I do not follow up). Just as an a example. There is a 'built-in-need to crop' so to say.
That is a good reason.
Oops, I meant the edges are sometimes covered by the matting.
A way around that is to print on a textured paper, something like cold press, and leave a few inches border on the paper. Eliminates the mat altogether and saves some money since mat board is really expensive stuff. Just make sure the picture framer places a spacer in there so the paper and glass don't touch each other.
I'd like to challenge you a bit. As these dogmas are to document what is there and reject any kind of image development as a manipulation (dodge + burn, cropping), we should take the mindset and reconsider. What does it mean for the execution of photography? I took a coffee and thought a bit...
We should add the following requirements to raise the bar:
- no filters allowed, especially no polarizers, ND-filters.
- BnW is prohibited, we humans see colors, this limitation opens the gate to interpretation as colors are equalized and appear as gray only, not possible to distinguish. And filtering for a color is also not documentary.
- tripods are a no-go, as our perception is also just a tiny fraction of a second. We want to document cleverly only!
- white balance: need to be fixed to 'auto', as any change might cause a change in color rendering und can change the mood in a documentary. A No-Go.
- focus and aperture. That can be used in a manipulative way as well, leaving the path of 'documentary only'. Everything need to be in focus, so chose a narrow appetite. Then a fix-focus camera is sufficient.
As we are now scared off to do something wrong, better to leave any camera at home and stop photographing. Yes, I wanted to exaggerate here. To show a bit where we can end up applying 'religioss sounding requirements' to photography. It can kill any joy and remove freedom just to do things 'right'.
Edit: add requirements, remove typos, misspelling, conclusion.
I think you're pushing the argument much further than what Dogma 11 actually says.
The point isn't that every decision in photography is manipulation, nor that photography should become a religion of restrictions. If that were the case, we'd end up where your satire leads.
The distinction is much simpler: there's a difference between making photographic choices before pressing the shutter and altering the recorded image afterward. Choosing your lens, aperture, focus distance, exposure, or even whether to shoot in color or black and white are all part of the act of photographing. Cropping, cloning, dodge and burn, AI edits, or other post-capture changes modify the photograph after it has already been made.
You may disagree with where I draw that line, and that's perfectly fair. But the dogma isn't about eliminating creativity or freedom. It's about accepting responsibility for the photograph at the moment of exposure rather than solving it later in post-processing.
Whether that philosophy appeals to you is another discussion entirely, but I don't think it leads to the absurd conclusion that nobody should pick up a camera anymore. The intent of my article was more about the presence and it starts with the idea that limitations can lead to more creativity. I can see that also with using old cameras respect to the new models.