Don't beat yourself up because you can't make the Mona Lisa of photographs people compare you to. In many ways you're dealing with a male version of a Karen if they get fuming over a photo. As long as you aren't actually charging money for it, that you are doing it for you, I don't see the issue.

If the audience of your images are people who mumble, "fucking piece of shit" whenever you're having fun, in some ways it's them more than you.

>>4310104
Unqualified advice

>>4310102
Visit galleries. Most photography-as-art presentations have a theme, like "distance from others", and are not just "a nice picture of ____". The theme is well executed, creatively, and consistent throughout the photographs. Sometimes it transforms into another theme, it depends on how multiple photographs are presented.

All the stuff they say like transformative, intersectional, paradigm, you can safely ignore this. What the critics and promoters say is the investment scheme side of the art world - think of it like pump and dumps in the stock market. But with more money laundering. Something like 2/3s of art purchases are anonymous, in cash.

>>4310102
Well have you ever actually thought about a photo before you took it? Instead of just
>look purty me snap

>>4310102
Yes it is, but you need to put real effort into your work.

Taking a great singular photograph is extremely challenging, and may not happen for a very long time. Don't have a loser mentality like zach does and you may just take a few good photographs in your lifetime.

I think that many people take a lot of photographs but never really develop their own style. One way to do this is by emulating your favorite artists. The idea is not to copy their work, but to copy their style. If you do this enough you will eventually develop/find your own style.

>>4310102
>essentially just capturing the world as it exists with little meaning or really interest I’d say. Even calling it documentary would be too generous, it’s more cataloguing if anything.
i do this but i'm probably autistic, i want to just capture things exactly as they were
>creativity like other inborn traits where you can train and practice but there’s a limit to how much you can do with what you’re born with?
correct, some people will just never be creative in any type of media (i'm one of them)

>>4310133
>>4310170
So essentially you figure I have to have some kind of intent or aesthetic aspiration even before I shoot, so that I practice it essentially. That’s tough. But I suppose a painter or some such would need to have an idea of what they want to paint beforehand. Are photo books good or not really?

>>4310174
yeah it takes practice. I still get stuff poking in from the side of the frame sometimes because I didn't pay attention enough. Think about composition and how your eye will move through the frame. Where will the viewer look first? Is that thing the focus of the image? Are there two prominent things or more? What are the interplay between those things?
Those are just a few examples of things you have to think about. In general seek to think at a higher level than you have been. In terms of photo books I personally prefer looking at artworks instead

>>4310102
My problem with this is the HDR effect. It has so much local contrast that it leaves the photo somehow lacking in global contrast.

>>4310170
Yes, we should totally not be like that loser photographer Zach.

Lol

>>4310191
Wisest words you've said all day. Lmao.

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>>4310190
Back in 2014 overcooked HDR was all the rage anon, teenage me had to jump in the train. Even celebrities and the like were all on it
>picrel was posted seriously

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>>4310213
High dynamic range? Hmm interesting.

>>4310190
Just dont be a fujislug and crush the shit out of the blacks like you’ve been editing on a macbook set to max brightness in a basement

>>4310190
>My problem with this is the HDR effect
Watch out, Ken might kill you

>>4310213
These are the photographers who tell you that content beats quality (never mind every other “great” took the same snaps as everyone else on 4x5/8x10)

>>4310173
Based me too.

However I think it's important to capture things as they are. While it may be less meaningful now pictures from 150 yeFs ago the pictures of average people tell a much better story than the arranged portraits of famous people.

>>4310280
You can do both

>>4310279
Quality is content.

If something is razor sharp or dreamy, that's part of the content. It's not like photography ever showed the world exactly how people see it. Anyone who tells you otherwise (ie: "lens sharpness doesn't matter" "soft is always bad" "sharp is always bad" "muh micro 3d colontrast pops") is coping with something or has schizophrenia.

If you genuinely care about a subject or a place or a person, I believe your photos will reflect that. If you flit around between supposedly interesting things that you have no knowledge of or familiarity with, your photos stand little chance to be anything more than snapshots.

Let's say you are an alien tasked with photographing a baseball game. What and whom do you focus on? When do you focus on them? When can you expect the people around to react, and how will they react? How will you position yourself to tell the story of the relationship of your subjects? There's a big difference between photographing the batter when he's standing around, versus in the batter's box, versus swinging and missing, versus making contact, versus striking a celebratory pose after he hits a home run, versus the look of frustration when the ball falls just short and the outfielder gets him out. How could you possibly know to expect all of these intricacies if you just show up and gawk?

What's the best time and place to find a particular bird? Where's the best place in the city to look over the cathedral, and how does the differing lighting through the day change its appearance and mood? Where can you expect to find poor people, or rich people, or strange people?

>>4310102
There's little natural contrast in this picture. Literal and abstract contrast is what makes a great picture. Ideally you use the literal contrast to highlight the abstract contrast.

>aesthetic/creative/artistic (or whatever word you want to use) vision, and intent

Get this nonsense out of your head, you are a photographer.

>>4310290 gets it. Find a subject matter that fascinates you and explore it

>>4310461
I kinda like the small slivers of green trees and blue sky, contrasts decently with the city concrete and industrial browns. Technically it does seem oversharpened and is way oversaturated, makes it feel kinda boring and "all the same". yawn

>>4310491
>just be a brainlet like me bro

>>4310290
Good post. The intent thing is such a meme.

>>4310102
creativity is to some degree inborn. insofar as it can be roughly measured by psychometrics researchers, and it does appear to be partly heritable. You can imitate it by performing very consciously the sort of synthesis that naturally creative people perform. e.g. exposing yourself to broad influences and then combining different elements to make something new. think of it like being an autistic guy feigning normalcy. the smart ones get pretty good. though they'll never be ghe most charming, 80-90th percentile in anything is a comfortable place to be, whether buoyed by innate talent or elbow grease alone. it is important to remember that, like being good at math, talent only gets you so far unless you're an absolute freak. maybe you are more creative than you think, and you haven't learned to exercise that muscle right, OP.

>>4310290
Best advice
Get autistic about what you’re shooting. If you don’t, the best you’ll get is lucky


Or you can be like zack and just be ok with getting a few lucky snapshits here and there