The biggest myth of photography

We see this type of headline often. Things like 10 simple steps to great financial freedom, or 5 easy ways to improve, or the greatest myths about ____________. Often the headline makes us curious about what fascinating information and insight the authors have to bestow upon us. Some will even go so far as to say, these are “proven” methods but when we get to read them we rarely see the proof. Well, I thought I would do something similar except I am not going to prove it.

We rarely question a painting or drawing as being exactly what a scene looked like. We understand it is an artist’s rendition of something or someone. With photography, we often demand that the scene be an exact recording of a scene or person. I won’t even say expect, we often DEMAND IT! Especially photographers. Why is that? Is it that other photographers are familiar with taking photographs? If we weren’t there at the time do we really know what the scene looked like?

If I were to give you the details of the exposure of the featured photograph, 1/500th of a second at f/5.6 using a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens at 48mm with the ISO of 100 using a Nikon D750 could you really make an exact replica of my image? Maybe but most like not. Not unless you were at this location on September 3, 2021, at 2:48 PM. It may be close but it won’t be the same. The light is different.

There is often so much emphasis put on the technical data of a photograph we forget the greatest influence on the look of a photograph is light and the skill of the photographer. The biggest myth of photography is that knowing the settings of the camera when a photograph was taken will give you enough information to recreate the shot. You may get closer if I included the lumens.

Stop worrying about the camera settings someone else used. Do you really want to recreate the work of someone else or do you want to create your own work? You might even get something better than what you’re attempting.