How to Avoid Becoming a Lazy Photographer

Peeb · Feb 20, 2017

nerwin said:
Peeb said:

OK- so essentially the quote is that nothing is worse than a photo that's popular because everybody love it.

Wait- wut? LOL

That just sounds like "I'm an artist- not a snapshot hack" mumbo jumbo to me. If my portfolio is partly inspired by Ansel Adams, and partly inspired by Dogs-playing-poker-on-black-velvet, in both instances I'm hoping for images that people enjoy. Is the premise here that people are stupid, and their uneducated approval is the kiss of death to an artist?

Personally, I yearn for images that everybody loves.

Click to expand...

I have photos that are popular only because someone with a bigger following shared it that only liked my photo because that person liked itI not because of the photo was good or not.

But I think what he is trying to say is don't rely on the acceptance of others to determine if your photo is good or not.

I wish he'd just said that then. You shoulda written that article, Nerwin, now THAT I would read and benefit from.

As a photographer and a guitar player, I just grow weary of people slagging on 'popular' things as inherently deficient. By definition, something is 'popular' because a lot of people find merit in it. This BY DEFINITION means that it certainly must have at least some merit.

Personally, if I had an online following of several million fans- I would presume that I must be doing something right. Conversely, the fact that I DON'T have such a following does not automatically mean that I am a brilliant misunderstood genius.

Derrel · Feb 20, 2017

As far as popularity goes, and people assigning or giving a "Like" to photos, cat photos, puppy photos, and baby images get huge Like volumes. So do erotic and "modeling" images. Depressing photos get very few Likes. Skin (soft-core erotica,etc,) can draw a lot of Likes. Horrible, horrible landscape images with frothy waterfalls, poofy 10-stop neutral density cloud blurs, landscapes with green forest ferms with the green level jacked to +11.0, pretty sunrises, pretty sunsets, bikini gals...all of those types of photos can accumulate huge numbers of Likes, especially on the big aggregator sites, like 500px, for example.

Russian teenagers, about 20% of them photographed half naked and pretending to be 25...we saw how many Likes that guy's photo stream drew not too long ago.

The big aggregator type sites draw huge numbers of people who copy one another to a "T"...they seek the same exact cameras, lenses, ISO levels, the same software, the same processing "workflow"...it's basically a craptastic clone factory at one level, although there are also serious photographers on those sites as well.

I "think" what the guy who wrote the article was trying to write, and he writes only marginally well, is that there is a huge swath of photography work on the web--and a LOT of it is soft-core erotica; kitschy overprocessed landscape work, and also plenty of Puppy Dogs and Kittens stuff that draws at the heartstrings, but which has very little photographic merit or originality. I think he was trying to warn people not to fall into the easy trap of doing craptastic work that is guaranteed to draw tons of Likes, no matter how good the work truly is. "Serious" work on 500px is hard to find; the craptastic clone images float to the top of the bowl and swirl around.

zombiesniper · Feb 20, 2017

Would have read the article accept the website threw up a full page add of some sort. Lost interest after that.

Peeb · Feb 20, 2017

Derrel said:
As far as popularity goes, and people assigning or giving a "Like" to photos, cat photos, puppy photos, and baby images get huge Like volumes. So do erotic and "modeling" images. Depressing photos get very few Likes. Skin (soft-core erotica,etc,) can draw a lot of Likes. Horrible, horrible landscape images with frothy waterfalls, poofy 10-stop neutral density cloud blurs, landscapes with green forest ferms with the green level jacked to +11.0, pretty sunrises, pretty sunsets, bikini gals...all of those types of photos can accumulate huge numbers of Likes, especially on the big aggregator sites, like 500px, for example.

Russian teenagers, about 20% of them photographed half naked and pretending to be 25...we saw how many Likes that guy's photo stream drew not too long ago.

The big aggregator type sites draw huge numbers of people who copy one another to a "T"...they seek the same exact cameras, lenses, ISO levels, the same software, the same processing "workflow"...it's basically a craptastic clone factory at one level, although there are also serious photographers on those sites as well.

I "think" what the guy who wrote the article was trying to write, and he writes only marginally well, is that there is a huge swath of photography work on the web--and a LOT of it is soft-core erotica; kitschy overprocessed landscape work, and also plenty of Puppy Dogs and Kittens stuff that draws at the heartstrings, but which has very little photographic merit or originality. I think he was trying to warn people not to fall into the easy trap of doing craptastic work that is guaranteed to draw tons of Likes, no matter how good the work truly is. "Serious" work on 500px is hard to find; the craptastic clone images float to the top of the bowl and swirl around.

Now THAT is a reasoned and thoughtful explanation of what (probably) the original author SHOULD have said.

Well done.

nerwin · Feb 20, 2017

I think it's okay to take craptastic photos every now and then, but just don't get caught up in it!

Peeb · Feb 21, 2017

So, is this guy a mediocre photographer with a genius for taking popular snaps, or is he an excellent photographer with work that just happens to be popular? http://timesofsandiego.com/arts/2017/02/09/why-facebook-fawns-over-evgeny-yorobes-photos/

steveWFL · Feb 25, 2017

dude nailed it. we can argue all day about the shadow falling on the subject wrong or this and that about every shot posted. but “If your photo elicits emotion, without a human or ‘cute’ subject, then you are a master of your craft.”

personally though, I like shooting models a whole lot better than backyards and sunsets but thats just me