Monday, July 9, 2012

The Worst Advice In The World

I've stumbled across this one several times on those horrible web sites with Ten Tips to Improve Your Captures.Why I keep reading these things is a mystery to me as well.

Learn to use your camera in manual mode.


I can think of no advice for a beginning photographer that is less useful, and I say this as a fellow who routinely uses his DSLR in a fashion rather more manual that Manual mode (the meter doesn't even work using my old lenses.)

All these web sites, with their triangles of exposure, their rules of thirds, and their silly advice about seascapes, promote the terrible and damaging idea that photography is about gear, and that mastery of gear is a prerequisite to mastery of the art. A photograph is not a piano concerto, mastering the instrument is not necessary. The instrument, with its controls and modes and programs, is barely relevant. Mastery of the instrument will not actually harm you, but it's not going to make a photographer of you.

The best advice for a new photographer is, of course


Learn to see.


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