Photo Cliches you Love to Hate

[Peeb]

There must be dozens of them, but I'll start:

B/W photos with selective colorization of one part only. I've done this a million times (once recently), but I cringe every time I see a photo by someone else like this.

What do you look at and say "Oh no, not again!"???

 

[snowbear]

Here's three pages worth - take your pick.
http://www.thephotoforum.com/search/2487486/?q=Cliche&o=date&c[title_only]

Add "Fire Hydrants" to the list. They seem to be a favorite for those taking photo classes when you get the "multiple views of a single object" assignment.

 

[rexbobcat]

Matte blacks in post-processing. If you think it looks anything like film then you need to stop looking at bad scans.

 

[Designer]

High-school kids on railroad tracks.

Any model in a vacant building.

Wedding dress on a hanger.

Landscape with no particular subject.

"Which do you prefer; color or B&W?"

"Thoughts?"

Seriously underexposed.

(give me time, I'm sure I will come up with more)

 

[snowbear]

Oh, I'll add: fake (pp) vignette, sepia conversion, fake vignette on sepia conversion, railroad track (usually senior or engagement) shots and "heart hands."

overcooked hdr, but that's a whole (or hole) category by itself.

 

[Peeb]

Good stuff.

Am I the only fool who occasionally can't resist the cliche shot, KNOWING that it's lame, but still loving it?

"Hello, I'm Peeb, and a cliche-a-holic".

 

[snowbear]

In being fully open and honest, I hereby fully disclose that I have used three of the aforementioned subjects and/or techniques, that did not get trash canned, in my attempts at photography: selective coloring, fire hydrants, and sepia conversion.

I furthermore disclose that I did use each of those three subjects and/or techniques but one time, and the selective coloring was non-digital and involved artist's oil paints.

 

[Derrel]

From Designer:
Wedding dress on a hanger.
"Which do you prefer; color or B&W?"
"Thoughts?"

These are Gold Medal winning, Silver Medal winning, and Bronze Medal winning competitors! Just yesterday, I saw a post, "Color or B/W-so hard to decide," listed by the photographer. She had an average color outdoor nude, and a reallllllly crappy, God-awful B&W version of the same image. Both were poor.

QWedding dress on a hanger is really a cliche. So hackneyed and so pathetically tired. Retail photography has a lot of cliches and tropes that people "expect", and let's face it, many brides and grooms are 20-somethings with very limited visual taste. They want what their young friends want.

 

[Designer]

Am I the only fool who occasionally can't resist the cliche shot, KNOWING that it's lame, but still loving it?

Actually, you can really make some art if you find a way to do a cliche shot in a way that is totally unexpected and done better than any of the standard cliche shots.

O.K., now this is a lame example, but a while back a wedding photographer (sorry I forgot your name just now) posted a pair of shots with the wedding party on a railroad, and followed that with a shot of the wedding party running off in terror ahead of an approaching train.

Now I would not recommend using a real railroad for this kind of shot, but this was a hobby railroad, so I could tell it was staged in fun and relative safety.

I liked that pair of shots well enough to nominate the pair for Photo Of The Month.

Cliche done well.

 

[Peeb]

High-school kids on railroad tracks.
Any model in a vacant building.
Wedding dress on a hanger.
Landscape with no particular subject. GUILTY
"Which do you prefer; color or B&W?" GULITY
"Thoughts?" GUILTY
Seriously underexposed. GULITY
(give me time, I'm sure I will come up with more)

I'm guilty of the above- even tho I'm well aware of the cliche and don't often enjoy other's doing these.

Except for the 'boring landscapes'. I always love those. Perhaps I'm easily amused....

 

[jsecordphoto]

Milky Way self portrait with flashlight beam up at the sky. Please.stop.

 

[480sparky]

Any selfie. Especially taken in the bathroom mirror with a cell phone.

 

[snowbear]

OK, Now I want to make a sepia-toned selectively colored heart hand shot, from a vacant building with a wedding dress on a hanger off to the side, with the milky way in the background an lit by flashlight.
And to make @sm4him happy, I'm going to call it "Space" and enter it into the monthly challenge.

 

[limr]

Smoooooooth water.

 

[snowbear]

Smoooooooth water.

I like smooth water, especially when it's in smooth Scotch.