Do you find yourself always leaning heavily on certain composition tricks that you learned as you were developing your photographic skills? Sure, they might make your more mediocre shots a little better, but casting off these creative crutches can be the first step towards making great photographs. Being inspired by the work of other photographers and striving to emulate it in our own work is a natural part of the artistic development of a photographer. As it is in the other arts too, most of us learn by copying before we are able to attain some degree of artistic maturity and start to find our own voice.
In this age of social media, there is (for better or for worse) no shortage of other voices showing us how photography should be done. Photographers share their tips for creating beautiful, flattering portraits using longer focal lengths with wide apertures to create a shallow depth of field. Their subjects pop against a sea of dreamy bokeh, and we are suitably wowed.
So this is how it’s done! And we know that this is how it should be done because the people showing us the way have thousands of YouTube followers, and thousands of YouTube followers can’t be wrong. Right? It’s not that there’s anything wrong with this advice per se. Shooting at wide apertures to better separate your subject from the background is a well-established approach to portrait photography.
The problem with following this advice only starts when it becomes something that you automatically do wh.
