In a discussion with another professional photographer recently, we both noted a problem that seems to come up more and more these days.
Basically, it goes like this: you (the pro) get asked a question, you offer your answer, and then the questioner immediately (1) ignores the answer; (2) discounts the answer; or (3) argues that the answer is wrong.
I'm not saying that the other pro and I are never wrong. However, we have closing in on 100 years of experience behind us. We both are curious and constantly checking the boundaries of what is and isn't possible. We are open to change. Plus we both try to check and validate our answers from time to time.
I first noticed this "I don't believe you" attitude when I taught at Indiana University. Students were constantly probing the faculty on pretty much everything. It's a way of learning, actually: you're demanding the facts (or science) that back up assertions, and until you're satisfied that you're getting them, you tend towards disbelief. Skepticism can be useful, particularly in these days of powerful con men wandering all over the planet spouting disinformation as if it were fact.
Still, the problem while teaching photography has gotten a bit out of hand.
One of the common issues I face almost daily from questioners is the belief that "cameras can do no wrong." This happens most when discussing exposure and focus, and it can be brand-focused (e.g. Sony does it right, Nikon does it wrong). The sophisticated systems now employed in cameras for both exposure and focus generally do a very good job most of the time. However, I'm of the philosophy Trust But Verify. And I'm very quick to override the camera when it's not doing what I want. It seems that Elon Musk's uber hubris "hey our cars can drive themselves perfectly" attitude is now trickling down to the everyperson and everydevice. Those folk believing that technology does no wrong would do well to search for "Tesla autopilot accidents." I don't know what the current count is, but from 2019 to 2023 that was 736 crashes, and many of those were avoidable. So much for technology not being wrong.
There's also a corollary, which is "the camera caused the wrong." In this case, the student will state that they did everything right, but the camera somehow managed to make it wrong.
In the end, a camera is just a tool. That tool has capabilities and attributes. Your best use of the tool will happen only if you are fully aware of those capabilities and attributes and then control how the tool is used.
I understand the desire for "cameras should do everything right." It comes from the fact that we as photographers have to grapple with hundreds of decisions in making even a simple image. Yes, the number is in the hundreds, and I've at this point documented several hundred. In my own workshop teaching I tend to emphasize about 27 key, intersecting decision points you have to deal with.
A bigger issue is that if it were just a matter of the camera getting all 100+ decisions correct, that would also imply that there is only one possible photo in any given situation, and you can just forget about the two things that we pursue as photographers: craft and creativity. If the camera were always perfect, you wouldn't need any craftwork. Meanwhile, creativity would disappear because, well, the camera would always make the exact same decision.
Which brings me to the last bit I find myself struggling more and more with students these days: the artistic bit. Did they have a solid idea of what they wanted to accomplish, and did the final result actually achieve that? You can fail on either or both of those points. (I was struck by something while doing some additional word checking and research for this article: I noticed that Wikipedia does not include photography in their list of things that are considered "art." Unless you count "other media", and even that might not be necessarily applicable to photography due to the example they cite. Yet photography absolutely fits under Wikipedia's upfront definition of art as "expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.")
I've long argued about art. I once surprised an art professor with my thesis that the way that bricks and grout were used on the Washington State University campus was an artistic expression, and actually a commentary on function. For example, the Administration building had brick and grout that matched in color, which instead of emphasizing the individual texture of the building made it look more like a walled fortress ;~).
I'm more than happy to give my opinion about art, even photographic art (despite Wikipedia's diss). It's my opinion, but it's based upon one heck of a lot of study and practice. To automatically dismiss this and claim that your blurry, poorly exposed, unclear subject photograph is art and I just can't see it may make you feel better, but it's not going to help make you a better photographer. I challenge all my students to capture and show what they're seeing. If I can't parse the result and they can't help me do so in their response to my questions, then I don't believe I've helped them at all. But usually what happens is that they ask me back why I think their work didn't rise to a higher level than I suggest it did, and they don't like my answer, so they just dismiss it.
Is this art? Is it a good photograph? What the heck is this?
So I'll leave you with this: if you want to get better at anything, you need to carefully listen to what others are telling you. You're free to decide that they don't "get it" or "don't know what they're doing" and that you should ignore them, but you should only make that decision based upon some clear evidence of same. If it's just your ego getting in the way of listening, you're doing yourself a huge disservice.
I come from Silicon Valley (in peace ;~). If there's anything I learned there it's this: you learn far more from your failures than you do your successes. But you're only going to do that if you listen, properly analyze what you hear, and make appropriate responses.
If someone bluntly tells you "I don't like your photograph," the proper response is not to either stop listening to that person or just outright dismiss their opinion, but rather to figure out why they said what they said and whether that has any relevance to something you might or should do differently in the future.
Great photographers didn't just start out great and stay great. Great photographers start out as naive photographers and learn, learn, learn. Great photographers stay great by constantly learning. Make sure you're learning, not dismissing.
