Happy

This month has been a whirlwind of photography for me. I’ve found the social photography website Flickr and I have been networking like crazy. It’s a thrill to connect with great photographers and get to exchange feedback with them. I’ve been participating in various voting games where people often leave feedback on your work explaining why they voted the yea or nay.

I have absolutely no problem having my work criticized. In fact, I love it. There is this notion of a cliché photo and many people will vote something down if it’s “cliché”. They are supposedly shots that get taken frequently and get seen a lot. That’s fine and dandy, but I’ve quickly learned that this is VERY subjective and it’s downright intellectually dishonest. Does a commonly shot subject automatically make it a bad photograph? If someone tells me my shot is cliché, the first thing I do is look for their work. I want context for their reasoning because calling a shot cliché is vague at best. Next I look for critiques where they are supportive of people’s work and try to understand how they think. It’s not easy to shoot with the expectation of pleasing people.

In the end I’ve found that these type of people when presented with something that is truly unique and different, they don’t like it just the same because it falls outside some standard of what a good photograph looks like. So you’re standing at this revolving door of hypocrisy where if you follow the “rules” you are cliché and if you don’t your work is too unusual and it breaks the rules.

So in the end, photography is about shooting what you love. If you want to shoot your flowers in the garden or your house cat, who cares if it’s been repeatedly done and might be considered cliché? If you want to give your portrait a heavy vignette with a red color shift like my shot above, do it. If you truly love what you’re shooting, your work will be great. There are ways to form stronger compositions and get better color with better light, but as a basis, you need to have passion about what you’re shooting first. Next, take the picture that best depicts your mind’s eye.