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Comment by smiley1437 | Hacker News Reader

Informally, it’s called ‘having an eye’ and some people are blessed with it, others work hard to acquire it, and camera technology can seem to offer it. But ultimately, you’re right, it’s still your choices as a photographer that most influence the quality of the work, and while good tech doesn’t hurt, it’s not really the tech.

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Note that it also applies to consumers of photography as well. Not all consumers of photography necessarily draw any artistic value from the photos they look at.

For example, my mother would complain about my travel photos that didn't contain people, or would look for things like whether the people looked happy. She couldn't care less about the rule of thirds, bokeh or dramatic lighting.

Don't get me wrong, artistry and craft matter, but I think they would be considered "enhancements". Most people would gladly accept a poorly composed image of a loved one or special moment because they value the memory over other attributes.

> For example, my mother would complain about my travel photos that didn't contain people, or would look for things like whether the people looked happy. She couldn't care less about the rule of thirds, bokeh or dramatic lighting.

Heh, this is one thing I regret about my past photos — I have plenty of travel photos, but very few with myself in them.

And while I know my composition and lighting fundamentals, my photos will rarely be on par with someone with the luxury to wait for the right moment, or something from a postcard or the best of Flickr or 500px.

I'm also rarely in my travel photos, but that's more because I don't like looking at myself in photos.

Now, but will you think the same in 20 or 30 years?

I'm already at the half century mark, and while I do go through my older photos occasionally, I am still happiest when looking at photos of our dogs.

Who knows if that will change in 20 or 30 years.

Art is about what the creator adds. There are already better photos of almost every urban and natural scene you could travel to. Download them and you can enjoy the place live and also have great pics to share and save.

What you bring to the scene is you and your relationships with the people and things there. That's your marginal advantage from your photos.

You'll get better photos by taking candids than posing portraits everywhere though.

While I generally agree with what you're saying, I will say that candids are not necessarily better than posing portraits. That's a very subjective thing.

There are some cultures that prefer the posed portraits over candids.

It's an interesting dynamic.

I spent 25 years telling people to "get out of my photos" in landscapes. Then something clicked in 2008 and I became all about people (to the point of running a Wedding/Event/Portrait photography business for a decade or so:).

I'll still take landscape photos, and I enjoy them, and some of them are decent... but I still get most excited when I capture a particular expression on a person these days. Go figure!

It's very trainable.. huge amounts of art classes deal with composition.

Anything you work on in drawing & painting carries over to photography near 100% as well.

And there are plenty of famous photographers who have been great musicians as well who would argue that music & photographic composition are somehow related as well.

I'm a pro, and I absolutely despise going back and looking at images of mine that are just a few years old. It's amazing how fast that eye develops when you're doing it often. I bet if I posted all of last year's weddings in full people could judge which ones were earlier in the year vs later. In Minnesota that's just a 4 month window, and I've been working professionally for 6 years.

What aspects of your older work do you not like? Is it your "eye" (subject framing), or technical details (like nonoptimal camera settings or wrong length glass), or something else?

Thanks for sharing your other comments, btw.

Oh god, pretty much everything. I would say the largest thing is editing, including simple things like color balance and overall exposure. My retouching used to be awful, but to be fair to myself very few photographers have the retouching skills I know have. A bit of it is overall composition, lighting, etc.

In short, there are images that I used to be really proud of that now are honestly a bit torturous to look through.

This is why I gave up photography as a hobby. I don't 'the eye' for it. All my photos come out bland and badly composed. These days my DSLRs and all their lenses just sit in a draw gathering dust.

My photos are similarly uninteresting, but this is something you can train for. You don't have to be born with this skill.

Photography courses teach basic composition skills that you have to know -- that is, if you follow them blindly you'll get decent and non-boring photos -- and then you can develop your style by selectively subverting them. I suppose getting your own style is about breaking the rules to get more "interesting" and unique photos.

You can definitely train it though, you never see other people's bland and poorly composed photos. Pick em back up! Or sell them...

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