If you're smiling at that, don't get cocky. Amateurs are even worse. After last week's column, Ken Croft observed:
I can now fully understand the fascination of the Nun in Venice. When I said I didn't like it, I thought that was the truth. If I analyze my thoughts, I probably dismissed it because I subconsciously realized that I would not expect my immediate friends to like it, if I had taken it myself. I guess I have drifted into taking pictures that friends and family will like, or that might win competitions, in order to win admiration and approval, rather than taking pictures just for myself.
That's an acute, perceptive insight. After twenty years (I'm not gonna start saying "twenty-five" until I absolutely have to*) of teaching and writing about and learning about photography, I firmly believe that Ken's insight describes what many of us do (or try to do), at least at first, and sometimes for many years. What informs the taste of people who pursue clichés, then, is their idea of the taste of others. Not the actual taste of others, mind you, but just the photographer's best attempts at second-guessing.
We each are stuck with using our own taste as the foundation for what's good or bad, because the taste of others is so varied and unpredictable. If I found one person who loved one particular picture of yours and and gushed about it on and on, praising it to the skies, and another person who hated it and pronounced it worthless, what would that teach you? If you learn your own taste and cultivate self-confidence, you can be secure in the face of either reaction.
When you know with a quiet but solid confidence that you truly like one of your pictures and you're not shaken in the least when someone says, "What the hell is the point of that?" or "I hate that!," you're there.
Go for it. Dare to be different; be yourself. Eschew cliché.
read the full article:
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2011/10/eschew-clich%C3%A9.html
