Response to "Why Most Street Photography Today Looks The Same" by George Holden
George Holden put out an interesting video about “Why Most Street Photography Today Looks The Same“.
Before reading further, please watch it - it’s good and only 9 mins long. It is needed to understand the discussions that follows below.
To sum it up, George argues that people are watching too much Social media photos that all use/teach the same “composition rules”, guides, “hacks to improve your photography MASSIVELY within 10 seconds” which leads to very similarly looking photos. Your photos were “pre-picked” for you in your mind, even before you went out shooting.
„A good composition with uninteresting content is still a bad photo“
Instead of only watching IG/TikTok photo tricks, pick up photo books and browse through these!
Personally, I had the same observation in the past months and years and like to add a couple of points:
1.This is not only about Street Photography
In fact, even in the comments of the Youtube Video others claim your examples were not street photography ones. I think this point is valid for all kinds of photography.
2. These "rules" or recipes are really easy to teach/learn
They are probably incorporated in photo-taking apps in the near future soon (think a KI that suggests rule of thirds, guiding lines, symmetry, reflections etc). So just learning these will not get you 1 million followers or huge photo jobs.
3) Exceptionally good photos do use these “tricks”
The difference is: The usage of these rules actually ADD to an already awesome photo, not in the sense that the rules are simply applied but that the usage deepens and add to the meaning of the sujet of the photo -so there is a good reason for being applied.
Remark:
After pondering a week or two about this post before actually putting it online I like to add one more point though: Practicing these composition rules in order to get them under your belt and be ready to use them when they make sense is a different story and OK - I guess. Just be aware why you are actually including it in the photo.