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.
the rules (composition, exposure, ,..) can be broken so they don't matter...
the rules are know effects of choices, they work because we humans and our brain works like this... and untill that changes, they work.
it needs understanding of these effects and those rules to break them and get a better result, that, or sheer luck.
Idk if this fits this category since its more the artistic side, but people who cover surveillance as a topic, I swear its white noise to me now. And big named artist publishing books full of blurry images and they get away with it purely because of their names. Like if i posted one of these images for my uni course I'd fail
Photo editing software. People have become compositionally lazy from the mindset of ‘take a picture it and “fix” it in photoshop so that it looks like I imagined it when I took the shot,’ instead of having the patience and skill and taking the time to capture a photograph that needs no post-processing.
Photoshop IS NOT PHOTOGRAPHY!
Regular people, posing in poses that do not suit their lifestyle.
Example: I knew someone who was regular as fvck, and a damn nerd. He spoke like the normal Mexican citizen in the United States would, an accent with proper words. He was a hip hop head, and has a REALLY REALLY good family. Bro always had the tight people around them. Yeah, they were bullies, but what they didn't do was commit crimes.
The moment it was picture time, this dude was a thug, and gangster. Like, bro, relax. You ain't gangster, you're just another person pretending. You are not a gangster, you are not a thug, you are not black, that's not what it means to be a Mexican. Etc etc.
It's even more offensive for me because I know people who lost their lives to that lifestyle. Friends, family, and fvckin pets.
If you're with it, be with it. Show it. My culture isn't a pose you put on for a picture.
I have 3 quick ones.
1: Taking it on a nice camera doesnt automatically make it a super amazing great picture. Yeah its better than a smartphone, but so is everything compared to the lowest bar. A good picture will be produced, but the best ones require good color grading and a good camera + lenses.
2: Photographers who block the path. I get it, especially if you have a client. Trying to get the pictures done while there is light out still, but the rest of us want to walk by you to get past, and the people who arent taking pictures do too. (I do live near a place where a lot of people like pictures taken so it may be a local thing).
3: Adobes Behavior as a company. Fuck adobe.
I dislike photography snobs. When I'm out doing street or urban I invariably spot someone doing likewise. I like to have a chat but don't try to judge me on my gear or setup, especially if you have black tape on the manufacturers logo of your camera.
People posting pics on various subs here with a title that doesn't match the image AT ALL. Similar to what ppl said about film... it seems like if you add a cool name or description a typically crap image suddenly becomes "art". It was so bad on the r/Nikon (I think) that I had to unsub since so many posts were just that - a out of focus snapshot of a tree and the poster calls it "my thoughts" or some such junk (I had to make that up since I've been able to clear my memory of actual examples.)
I have a few.
People with no discernible talent deciding that they're important enough to teach "workshops" and "seminars". Don't misunderstand: there are people I would happily learn from, but they probably constitute 5% of the photographers out there who have the hubris to think that they have what it takes to tell other people how to shoot.
People who pass AI generated art off as photography. AI generated art is a fascinating subject in itself, and should be treated entirely separately from photography.
Brand tribalism. It's pathetic and sad.
People who try to "buy skill". I remember this guy who had a photography themed blog for a while. He was clearly extremely wealthy (nothing wrong with that in and of itself), and he seemed to be of the opinion that if you have very expensive cameras and lenses, your photos will be amazing (he owned several Leica M rangefinders and the Noctilux 0.95). His own photos did an excellent job at disproving his theory.
"It's not about the equipment"
If you're going to a specific result it absolutely can be. When you're learning basics fine - something with some basic controls is all you need to learn how to expose and compose, but once you've got that down your equipment absolutely does impact the end result and you're at a point where you know it and you know what you want to get to get the photo you want.
Lens hoods that are reversed...
A lot of things I dislike were already mentioned here, but mine is a photography contest where the first place goes to a black and white photo of an old person with wrinkles being enhanced by HDR ...
People who ask to see my images and tell me to rip up my photography degree. Happened in the photography discord 3 times.
People selling “snake oil” gear (Yes, Gary Fong, I’m looking at you) and “influencers” selling gear with their name on for 5x what it’s worth.
People who are new-ish to it and try to squeeze in all of the annoying lingo to make it seem like they're in the know.
Bokeh
creamy bokeh
Fast pieces of glass
Etc
“I clearly never even opened the manual. Can Reddit explain how to do this relatively basic function?”
Or worse, “I’ve done zero reading. How do I execute this complex shot? Keep it simple and brief.”
This is dumb and I know it shouldn't bug me, but it does..
When someone takes a similar photo as me, but it's not nearly as good, and it gets more appreciation than mine.
I do filming location photography, and there's a while group of us in IG that do the same. I take time to get nice clear high res screenshots and will meticulously line up my shot to perfectly match the scene from the movie/show, edit it for color and lighting and make the whole thing look real nice to compare the 2 and I'll get maybe 50 likes on IG or reddit.
Then one of the others makes a post where their "screenshot" is just an out of focus picture of their tv and their comparrison shot is clearly trying to match the angle but it's off pretty bad, not editing is done, it's just a poorly lit cell phone snap, and they get 300 likes.
Again, I know it shouldn't matter and in the end it really doesn't, I do this hobby for me, but it also kinda sucks putting in all this effort just for people to appreciate a pic that barely has effort put into it
My biggest pet peeve is people saying „gear doesn’t matter“.
Yes, you can take great photos with old gear, and you absolutely should. But good gear will make it easier, or make some thing possible that old gear can simply not do reliably. Upgrading my camera made me go from taking 5000 shots of a flying swallow hoping one is sharp to being able to compose my image knowing the autofocus will hit no matter what.
Selective color edits.
Always throwing some rando with an umbrella into the middle of every city shot like you’ve never seen an umbrella before.
"The best camera is the one you got with you" meme. Always coming from people having A7R4's or Z8's or whatever
Clients that say, “did you get a shot of….” or “do you have any more of…..” or my personal favorite, “could you just give me all the photos you took?” No Barbara, I don’t have more of anything and I’m not giving you everything I took.
The photographers that talk down to me cause I still shoot DSLR. I’m comfortable and confident with what I shoot and that’s what I need right now at this stage in my career. Also have y’all seen the prices on mirrorless? My bank account could never right now
People who try to pass technical errors as artistic license. No, your out of focus poorly framed weirdly edited shot isn’t “a matter of personal preference”, it just sucks.