this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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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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The assumption and always repeated advice that every picture has to „tell a story“.
I’ve always taken this piece of advice differently, I’ve never seen it as ‘tell a story’ but rather ‘tell YOUR story’, which just helps get across how I saw the scene in the image, both in field and in editing, eg highlighting what I was focused on, pushing in the emotions I was feeling. This changes when the focus is some kind of external story, street and wildlife mainly you’re capturing another story, but for landscapes I take it in this other way of capturing MY story - if that makes sense
This is exactly it! It’s not “what is this photo supposed to say to me”, but “what are you trying to say to me through the photo”.
Why did you take it? What made you stop? What did it remind you of? If you can’t answer any questions, then yes you’ve taken an uninspired photo. Rarely is a photo both uninspired and beautiful, but happy accidents do happen! The reality is we all take uninspired photos, and if you shoot enough you’ll have a whole separate life’s body of work comprised of uninspired photos.
Posting the uninspired photos to the internet for critique or for attention is what we see a lot of here, and I think that’s what gets people all fussy.
IDK. I shoot landscape. The only reason I take a photo is because I think the scene or some elements in the scene look pretty.
My goal is to make wallpapers. Something pretty, not too distracting, and would look good as your phone/computer background.
The reason I even got into photography to begin with is when I got my first computer and fell in love with all the nature wallpapers I'd find on the internet.
Yeah nah, fuck that, if the light's pretty I'm just going to shoot what captures it. I've had so many people say some of my photos are snapshits (sic). That's cool, I don't photo for them, I photo for when I'm old and grey and I saw a cool thing that time when I was 26 and wanted to remember it in the future.
It took me so long to get over this… what story does it tell?! Uhh pretty thing shiny?!
YES!!!! I HATE THIS SO MUCH!
So much this!
I have wandered around some of the best art galleries in the world, and the number of images that can only be described as "rich entitled old white cunt" literally makes me cry.
Artists have to live and pay rent, and it's those old cunts who can pay. So the story is: the guy paid for a portrait.
Reminds me of dream analysis. Did you dream of a peanut on a coffee table? Well, then, it’s clear that your inner child is being tormented in the darkest dungeon of your psyche…
I hate this shit. I try to take pictures that are visually interesting, "narrative" has nothing to do with that.
I never bought into that. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Nothing wrong with just capturing a beautiful moment in all its simplicity.