“Your photos are beautiful, you have an amazing camera”
“Your photos are beautiful, you have an amazing camera” or words to that effect, are words that probably most photographers have heard countless times from friends, family or random strangers we’ve shown our photo’s too. For me I find this a little insulting, as it doesn’t take into account the numerous hours spent planning, shooting and editing said photos and simply gives all the credit to the click of a button.
Granted the camera does play a huge part in how our photos will eventually look, but 9 times out of 10 it’s not just as simple as pressing a button.
If a friend invited you over to their house for a lovely home cooked meal, you wouldn’t say “the food was delicious, you have a fantastic oven”.
Or if you were lucky enough to meet that author whose words you so admire, you wouldn’t say “your stories are incredible, what version of microsoft word do you use to create them?”
So why do people feel it’s ok to say such things to photographers?
Below are a few examples of a few photos that’ve received similar comments.
Sometimes a photo may not be a single photo at all and is actually an composite consisting of 10 or more images, this photo actually took over 30 minutes to shoot, and around the same to edit, combining multiple layers and exposures.
[twentytwenty]
Sometimes we can’t get both the highlights and shadows and we have to use that editing to reveal both, and even to remove aspects that draw your eye away too much from the image. See if you can spot everything that was removed.
[twentytwenty]
and sometimes we just want to enhance details that are already there to give images that extra pop.
[twentytwenty]
So just remember next time you see a photo, wether it be on your Facebook feed, flickr or even on a smartphone, just because it looks nice and simple, it doesn’t necessarily mean it was.
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