The Worst Photography Advice I've ever heard...

The last time I went up Y Garn here in Snowdonia I heard probably the worst photography advice I've ever heard. I found it confusing and unhelpful, and I don't think anyone should follow it, but maybe that's just me. Also I enjoy a blue hour with my camera - it was fun! Thanks for watching :)

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[evawettergren]

Honestly, watching you do your thing as you take photos is immensly comforting for a beginner like me. I always feel so awkward and somewhat stressed when trying to take pictures, as if there is a line of people impatiently waiting for me to get done. Don't know why as I'm always alone when going out to take photos...

[ijclarkphoto]

From my point of view the best advice is: “don’t walk up to photographers and start giving them advice”. Maybe I should just get a sign saying “leave me alone” when I’m out though... :)

[VintageInsightPhotography]

Not everyone is gifted with the skill of clear and concise communication. He was most likely attempting to be profound, but missed the target.
What a stunning location. Beautiful!

[ChrisMustermann]

I think he meant the absolute opposite ... one picture of a situation can tell you more than thousand words that describe it. So this underlines, how simple photography is compared to texts/words. You have the ability to create strong feelings with only one photograph.
And that is what you should aim for ... tell a story in only one picture. 🤔

[jenniferakes]

Best advice I ever got about photography is shoot what makes you happy, photography should be about your own personal view of the world. If you get really lucky you get to take others along for the ride through your images.

[carlosiglesias]

Hi James. I’m a field engineer, which is great cause I get to bring my camera on trips all over the world. In my field, I have to write a lot of reports that include pictures and in that scenario, pictures of what I’m describing in my reports speak louder than anything I could write on paper, or iPad, in my case.

It’s possible that the ‘alleged’ pro photographer in your story may be alluding to this, “you could describe what you see in 1000 words or take the picture instead.”

[przybylskipawel]

Beautiful place! At 6:15 I could see nice flat stones sticking out diagonally from the ground forming V-shapes. I wonder if that could make nice foreground.

[shanehuntcreative]

Hey James. I just found your channel recently and I think it’s pretty great. I love how ambivalent and uncertain you are with your advice & opinions, because it is so much more relatable and honest than these strongly opinionated, black & white, absolutist photographers you see on YouTube. It is more difficult to hear for beginners, but it’s more helpful in the long-run. Anyway, thanks for the great videos.

[Linealo]

I imagine the advice meant, that you should rather takes images about things rather than just of them. If you take an image about something, it tells a story (a thousand words) but when you just take an image of something you only photographed this something (one word).
Though this is a mantra to definitely think about, I also think it's flawed in that you need to take images of something to learn how you take the images in the first place. So to take an image about something and to tell the story, you first need to understand what an image "of something" is missing to make it tell those "thousand words".
I don't think it meant taking a complex image, but rather one that makes you invested in it when looking at it - so to say, telling you a thousand words in your mind. An image that manages to keep you attracted to its content even after already telling you a thousand words... Which is often quite hard even with text.

Anyway, still a great video. Makes me want to travel again and just go outy but life's busy and the situation still ravaging the area. So all the good advice here sadly will have to wait a bit longer...

[angelspawn]

As someone who's only been into serious photography for about 1.5 years, I can say that the advice that guy gave means little to nothing to a new photographer. The first couple of months for me was just about learning how the camera operates, the settings and how to get the shot I want via the camera settings. I remember watching tutorials and hearing them talk about story telling and how a scene should complement the subject...etc. I never understood this back then. How could I understand something as complex as telling a story within a photo when I barely had a grasp of what I was doing with my camera, let alone think even deeper into my photos.

I'm barely starting to look into videos on how to tell a story with photography after having taken thousands of pictures and know how to set my camera to get the shot I want now and have a good grasp of what I'm doing, I have taken a decent amount of photos that have "story" in them, but now I'm finally able to understand what that truly means and am looking to refine that area of my photography.

[bolindow]

I just think about the 1000 words as another way to say "every picture should tell a story to be interesting"

[juna]

Moody, cinematic and absolutely beautiful scenery you have there!

[authenticarkansas]

I love these videos that just show the real process. It’s too easy to watch YT and see an edit of nothing but absolute bangers and wonder what you might be doing wrong. My process looks a lot more like this, midges included (we call them no-see-ums) and these are still beautiful shots.

[jonathanbooj]

James, if you doubted, this kind of video is really interesting actually! Gives me your perspective of views, crops, F-stops to blur and so on out in the field - truly helpful!

[l.k.]

I like that you dont stretch out your videos and just start talking about the subject in the title in the last minute. Very sympathetic the way you do it, thanks a lot:)

[rafaelatakami]

You always film your videos in such beautiful and chill places, I love it

[raycarter]

I didn't take that to mean complexity. He meant you can say something simply in an image that might otherwise take a thousand words to say. It's a very sound, but somewhat trite gently philosophical comment.

[EmilWall]

The most important thing I learned from watching this video is tripod management, I'm a newbie and so far I've been extending one part at a time of each leg which takes forever. :D I imagine it will be a huge time saver doing all parts at once!

[bartjes]

Hi James, Thanks for sharing this location. I hope to be in that neighborhood very soon !
The advice could mean a lot of things. Best to let the scene work on you when you arrive before taking the camera. Then scout a bit to find the best composition

[joshuariggphotography]

Thanks for the great talk, about the midges of corse. Great video can’t wait to get over to Wales