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The Biggest Lies You've Been Told About Photography

CJ Chilvers
CJ Chilvers
1 min read

Earlier this week, I asked my readers to tell me about the biggest lies they've been told about photography. The responses included a lot of unexpected lies and some I'd never heard before. Feel free to keep adding to the stories and tell me about the lies you've been told.

Here's some of my favorites so far:

"Probably the lies I told myself: My early photos are great! (even though I don't have vision yet). I need the right filter/preset! (just pick one already). I need a better camera! (push) All I need to do is sell my photos for fame and fortune (it's way more complicated). People in my area will care about my project as much as I do! (nope). Etc." - Dave

"Many years ago, I went to a night school course on digital photography.  During the course, the 'instructor' (and I use the term loosely) informed the class that 'As your memory card fills up, the camera compresses the pictures more and you start to lose colour definition.  You start shooting in the daylight and things are fine.  By the time you move indoors at the end of the day the pictures turn yellow.'  This was from a supposed wedding photographer.  Good thing there's auto white balance these days." - Bruce

"Its all around us, in magazines, adverts etc. - the more pixels, the better the image. Sharp images with perfect bokeh from new cameras that soon will have 65 mega pixels in them." - Yuri

"Do good work and people will come to you." - William

"ISO is directly related to image quality. Sensor size is directly related to image quality." - Andy

"'You have to specialize and only shoot in that genre!'  For a pro it probably makes sense to specialize and have a target market. But to be told as an (advanced) amateur, that I should really have settled down into one genre by now is ridiculous.  Who decided that I can or should only shoot one or maybe two genres?  As an amateur I do this for the fun of it and part of that is shooting anything and everything." - Paul

"'You must shoot in Raw.' Most of that coming from Scott Kelbys website. I'm not sure how many years I wasted chasing that cold, digital, soulless look, but it was a relief when I let that go and all of my equipment." - Robert