Say CHEEEEEEESE! and other ghosts

Posted on by

When I was a child, my parents kept telling me to not cut off people’s heads in photographs, to keep the sun in my back, to step back and make sure I have everyone in the frame, to make everyone says “cheese” in pictures. Smiles were important.

It took me a while to realize that my parents actually weren’t real photographers and that I could probably ignore that piece of advice. So I went on to make my own rules. (Actually my mother is going to participate in one of my photo workshops later this month to learn about photography from me now)

Have you ever started to question other people’s photography advice? Do you have any of those photography-related childhood leftovers that are still haunting you every now and then? Tell us all about them in the comments!

  • http://www.playlephotography.co.uk Mark Playle

    When I was a child I’ll always remember my grandfather telling me to ‘Watch the birdie’.
    It was not until recently that I found out that in the early years of photography, photographers used a small model bird made from copper to entice the children to look where they wanted for the composition. My Grandfather being born in the early 1900’s must have had this said to him few times during his childhood.

  • jayanth narikkuni

    In 1953 I got my first twin lens camera made by Ricoflex. It was a graduation from Kodak box camera.Excited loading with a black and white film I ran to take picture of my pet a black Minorca hen. she will not stay still for me to take a picture. Seeing my fustration my father told me to feed the bird and then take a picture. This snap came in the school magazine!

  • http://kingsleywillis.com Kingsley

    Chris,

    Yes indeed I have a story like yours. My mother also told me when I first held a camera to shoot with the sun behind me. But as you know with people that produces the squint effect.

    I recently bought my mom a digital camera — not a dlsr, but one that has all the manual control that her old film camera had. I can’t get her to use the camera in manual mode and she sticks with program modes.

    It turns out I thought my mother’s old film camera was an manual slr. But it wasn’t. It was a range finder camera and fully automatic!

    Like you, I grew up thinking my mom had all this photographic knowledge and now I’m teaching her. She still has a great eye though :)

    ~Kingsley

  • Don Lee

    Growing up I was always told that a flash is a must indoors (using on camera flash of course). This obviously isn’t the case and I often chuckle to myself when I look at old family photo albums where we all look like Deer in front of headlights! This effect looks even worse as the old photos age; especially the Polaroids.

    Don

  • Tracy Taylor (aka modeltweaker)

    The classic “back to the sun” method was evident in a lot of my early pictures. Some had peoples eyes tearing from the blinding light. The other bad advice is people standing perfectly square to the camera, shoulder to shoulder. It only works well for an intimidating looking group. Great for military and police. Another piece of advice for group shots was make the people laugh and your guaranteed a smile. This is great except if you do it too well it takes a while to get the group under control. Or worse I missed an important group shot once by making them laugh to the point where two women wet themselves and had to run to the bathroom…never to return. The last one is shine a flashlight in the eyes to prevent red eye. This actually worked well once I figured out what was causing the color cast on the faces and turned the flashlight away just before releasing the shutter. What I’ve learned is that all advice is good for the soul, but it doesn’t always make better pictures.

  • http://www.chinacoop.net Cooper Strange

    My dad’s photography advice was pretty good, actually. He taught me to try different perspectives (low, high, side to side, and such); try to capture a photo from an angle that people are not used to seeing. Sounds like Dead Poets’ Society, actually…standing on desks is a good idea.

    There were also little, practical tips I learned by watching, like holding my camera up against something that will not move (walls, trees, etc) to keep it stable with slow shutter speeds.

  • http://jillb.smugmug.com Jill

    I’ve learned that even if you must violate every inculcated rule (because of time constraints, poor weather conditions, malfunctioning equipment, etc.) there’s still a decent picture, maybe even a great shot, lurking somewhere. Never despair!

  • Bob Faulkner

    Remember flash bulbs? Having to have a thick hanky to pick them out of the flash gun. Thank goodness for Magic cubes!

  • http://www.drummstudios.com Jason Drumm

    That’s so funny! I just had a blast teaching my 2-year old how to use the camera for her first time. It was a “proud daddy” moment. In fact, I wrote a post about it: http://drummstudios.com/blog/?p=533 and put up her first photo!

  • http://www.monismotivklingel.de Monika

    I remember that I was told not to use a wideangle lens when shooting portraits because noses and chins may become huuuuuge.

    It turned out that one of the best portraits I shot on the Everest Trek was taken with my 12-24mm lens – at 14mm on a crop camera.