I’m not sure we should share our photography secrets, and I’ll explain why – 1v1 Video Chat & LIve Streaming & Influencer Subscription

By Rod Lawton

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How was this dramatic landscape achieved? All I’ll say is layers, masks and blend modes. (Image credit: Rod Lawton)
Imagine you develop a new technique or approach of your own. You share your process with the world. Soon everyone is copying it. What was once unique is now everywhere. Probably nowhere near as good as when you do it, because process alone can’t replace the original creator’s unique visual skills, but there it is.

What I’m suggesting is, if you do come up with a striking photographic treatment, don’t tell people how you did it. Let them make up their own special processes! What photography needs is not everyone copying everyone else, but people coming up with their own ideas.

This rich, golden-hour landscape was ‘relit’ with adjustment layers and masks and intensified with selective HSL adjustments. I’m not giving you any more clues! (Image credit: Rod Lawton)

This is one of my favorite looks. I could explain step by step how it’s done, but I promise you can learn so much more by working it out yourself. (Image credit: Rod Lawton)
It’s actually quite stimulating to try to ‘reverse engineer’ an effect you admire but you don’t know how it was done, because quite often you discover something new and not really related which is exciting in itself. It encourages people to experiment and learn things for themselves.
And I do think there needs to be an element of ‘magic’ in photography. We shouldn’t always be shown how things are done. It’s a natural human instinct to try to help people by telling them how you achieved a certain effect, but what I’m saying is, don’t do it. Let them guess! Or, if you must, give them some clues to figure it out for themselves.

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If you see a photograph or an effect you like, don’t ask for step-by-step instructions on how it was done. See if you can work it out for yourself. Is it the lighting, the composition, the editing? All the clues will be in the image.
It seems to me that learning has become a terribly passive process. We’re spoon-fed information and we expect it that way. Active learning is different. It’s where you go out and try stuff and see what happens. We need more of that.

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Contributor

Rod is an independent photography journalist and editor, and a long-standing Digital Camera World contributor, having previously worked as DCW’s Group Reviews editor. Before that he has been technique editor on N-Photo, Head of Testing for the photography division and Camera Channel editor on TechRadar, as well as contributing to many other publications. He has been writing about photography technique, photo editing and digital cameras since they first appeared, and before that began his career writing about film photography. He has used and reviewed practically every interchangeable lens camera launched in the past 20 years, from entry-level DSLRs to medium format cameras, together with lenses, tripods, gimbals, light meters, camera bags and more. Rod has his own camera gear blog at fotovolo.com but also writes about photo-editing applications and techniques at lifeafterphotoshop.com

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