Photography

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A place to politely discuss the tools, technique and culture of photography.

This is not a good place to simply share cool photos/videos or promote your own work and projects, but rather a place to discuss photography as an art and post things that would be of interest to other photographers.

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Dunning–Kruger effect in photographers (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by trekfan85@alien.top to c/photography@viewfinder.pro

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I recently had a a collaborative job with another photographer for my full time employer. He handed me over files to bundle our photos for handover and his work was awful. Bad colours, out of focus and banding in the skies. Bad framing etc. Just all round sub standard. I spent a full day editing his work because we split up the work i had to use his photos too. I had a look through his online portfolio and connected on LinkedIn and he constantly posts bad photos with his logo on them. However he's good at business and has been a professional photographer for 30 years and does so many jobs freelance. I just can't believe how confident he is putting out substandard work. Its something we can all be guilty of but this was another level of bad.

I started out in photography straight from school and by the time I was 22 I thought I was amazing. I look back now 16 years later and laugh at my mediocre photography and cock sure confidence. I'm now 10 times more skilled and experienced but with only half the confidence. Has anyone else cone across photographer like this at professional level?

In short I worked with a photographer who's bad but doesn't seem to know it.

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[–] scottgaulin@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Never shot raw professionally, not once, ever. Just because someone doesn’t do what you expected doesn’t make it bad nor them unprofessional. There’s lots of different paid types of photographers and some workflows you seem call substandard are actually the standard in certain forms of photography. As a newspaper photographer our role was fast, small file size and unedited other than minor exposure adjustments and cropping. Newsprint color sucks and BW wasn’t much better. Jpeg was perfect, most of us got it right when the finger hit the shutter not hours later on a computer. All of us were paid with full benefits.

The DK effect is fully apparent in thinking there is only one way to do something and only one acceptable output that works for everyone and every style of professional photography even those one has never experienced

[–] trekfan85@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Journalistic photography is a beast all of its own. Him not shooting RAW is such a small aspect of this story. It wasn't a problem until I had to recover highlights. I often shoot jpeg when the situation calls for it. This particular shoot was a planned commercial shoot with a client brief and budget. Not a journalistic fast turnaround job. He was recommended to me ny a colleague who knows him personally and he fit the project budget for a second shooter. It was only after his images were an issue I discovered it's his entire portfolio. He has found his niche and his customer base. But it's not compatible with the specific commercial work I do. We are different photographers of different skill levels and specialities. That's what's so wonderful about photography. But there is a basic standard you should meet.