Cat Photos Account For Approximately 82% Of All Web Storage
Not to beat a dead horse but I’m going to. This topic gets covered by people all the time on the Web. It’s the zombie apocalypse of photography sharing, infections and unstoppable. The things everyone wishes you’d stop taking pictures of and posting. Here are my top five least favorite types of photographs to run across on the internet.
Your Kids
Just got that new DSLR and you’re ready to show off what it can do. You bring it on yourself to torture your poor children with being your first subjects because no one else will model for you. Oh aren’t they adorable? No they’re not. You’re still a crappy photographer and all we see is more crappy photos of some random kids. Of course it’s great to get out there and practice especially when you have a willing subject (most kids are) but stop showing everyone else.
Macro Shots of Every Day Shit in the House
Another common favorite thing of budding photographers. It’s a simple formula. Take camera, place it next to anything in your vicinity, take picture. Yep, it’s true. Taking a picture realllly close to something is going to make it look super big and blur out a lot of things in the background (bokeh). You will see every inch of detail of that coffee mug or lego brick. How riveting and original.
HDR Pictures
There is such thing as good HDR photography. It does have a purpose but you’ll never do it right. To most people HDR photo means:
- Take photo
- Use PhotoMatix Pro or some other software you pirated off the net to convert to HDR
- Push sliders to the max
- Make super saturated colorful picture with giant light halos around all dark subjects
- Amaze friends with picture of some every day scene that is now colored funny
It’s an abused photography technique that people think instantly makes them a star photographer. In reality it just makes you an asshole with a camera since any idiot can take a picture or two and run it through a program.
Pets
Yes of course after the made up statistic in the subject of all this I have to address this one. Unlike Your Kids pets applies to even pets you don’t own. Every imaginable picture of a cat or dog has been taken. There are millions if not billions of them in existence on the net today. Unless your dog is doing something remarkable (perhaps performing open heart surgery on a 14th month old baby?) it’s been done before. Every time I see a picture of a cat sitting on a couch, being a cat, all I can think is “Yep, that’s a cat.” Thanks for wasting my time. I wonder how much energy is wasted daily to power all the servers around the world which are hosting your crappy pet photography. I’d imagine it’s more than I’ll use in a life time, and I have a bad habit of leaving lights on in every room I visit.
Your Neighborhood
Ah what a beautiful day to take a walk down my street and take photos of fire hydrants, stop signs and parked cars. Maybe when I get back home I’ll convert them into HDR images to really make them shine. Everyone will be extremely impressed with the effort I’ve put into these masterpiece photos.
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Everyone needs to start somewhere. I’ve shot all these things before myself but that doesn’t mean you have to share them. Every time you look at your own photos ask yourself it’s interesting because you took it or interesting because of what is actually in the photo. Would you pay good money to print it? Would you actually charge someone money for the photo? Would you hang it in someone else’s home for all their guests to see? You don’t have to answer yes to any or all of those to say something is a good picture but those are the types of questions you should still ask yourself have before sharing.
You should also never need to explain your picture to people. While captions are certainly useful when done properly a good photo can always speak for itself. Many times I’ve commented on someone’s photo saying I didn’t get what was going on, what was the point or “why do I care?”. In response I get a laundry list of the reason this person took that photo and a bunch of other excuses why something doesn’t look good or right. It’s almost as if because something else messed up their photo that some how makes it okay if you just tell me about it. If I did a shoot and presented my client with photos all blown out or underexposed and said “It’s okay though, the sun was just too bright” they’re not going to really care about my excuse. Crappy photos are not made better by any sort of reasoning; don’t defend garbage, just throw it away and try again.
….or just start submitting your photos to this fabulous FlickR Group
Nerds
So many people I know have at one point in time called me a Nerd or Geek. While I find the word “Geek” some what acceptable (and possibly appropriate) I want to stand up and say one thing right now; I am not a nerd. To me a geek is someone who likes to learn things, usually technology oriented, but I have been known to “geek out” in a variety of other fashions. It’s understandable your average non-geek/nerd would confuse the two and use them interchangeably. Nerds like all the same things geeks like, truth, but they’re also disgusting cave creatures who take uncoolness to the next level. Unfortunately I have some friends who are nerds and might be put off by this next part but it’s time to really just put my frustrations with Nerd activities to rest.
Not sure if you’re a nerd? Well I’ve put together a good starter list. If you do more than one of these you’re in some serious trouble.
You Like Anime
Oh Man! Those Girls Are Bangin'
Over the top ridiculously loud and often senseless cartoons. Chicks with giant eyes, asses and tits to go with it. And stop right there. If you’re sitting there saying to yourself ”Dude tits and fine asses are cool” keep in mind we’re talking about cartoons. If you still think they’re cool well obviously it’s because you’re a nerd. Hate to spoil the party but not a single woman in the world looks like the girls in those cartoons; also many of them don’t fight with swords and belong to secret societies. The second problem here is, even if those girls did exist, please remember you’re a nerd and they’ll be repulsed by your Dorrito stained attire the second they have laid eyes upon you. Yes someone may like Anime for other reasons aside from tentacle rape scenes but you’re still going to be a nerd for watching.
You Still Read Comic Books
I’ve never really been into comic books, not even when it was appropriate to be. You know, when I was a child. It’s not quite as horrible as Anime (unless your comic book tastes are Manga) but it’s kind of like watching Saturday morning cartoons. You should have stopped about the same time it was awkward to be trick or treating.
You Dress Up For Movie Premieres
Do I really have to go into detail here? When you’re dressed like a storm trooper for opening night of Star Wars all I can think seeing you is: “ugh”. Actually that’s not even true. I hate Star Wars and would never go see it. And that’s not because liking Star Wars makes you a nerd; it’s because Star Wars, all them, are horrible movies.
You Even Partially Speak A Fake Language
Do you speak Klingon? How about refer to shit in the real world with terms you picked up in Harry Potter? Well that’s sad. See as a geek I would never spend the kind of time needed to learn it. Mainly because it will never be useful for any kind of intelligent conversation, ever. If you do everything I’ve mentioned on the list so far, god have mercy on your soul.
You Complain About FLAC And Other Audio Lossless Formats Being Unsupported By Devices On Internet Chat Forums
Yeesh, that’s a long one and probably just went over the head of anyone who isn’t a geek or nerd reading this. I’m basically talking about people who hate Mp3s, who claim that Mp3 music is essentially sounds like nails grinding on a chalk board. Instead of MP3s companies should support songs in other mostly obscure formats that are 10 times the file size of an MP3 to fix this problem.
You’re Over 18 And Your Parents Pay For Your World Of Warcraft Account
You have no excuse. There is nothing you can say or do to justify this. Playing WoW is bad enough, being too poor to actually afford it is another. Okay okay, maybe you’re in college right, full time. You don’t have time to work and have some sort of income that would pay for WoW so your parents help you. God knows school full time plus a 60-hours-a-week worth of WoW really does very little time for work.
You Wear Black On Black
Listed on the net as "My Favorite Black Jeans"
Black t-shirt tucked into your black jeans? Okay nerd. Even better that the blacks are different shades.
The Happiest Moment Of Your Life Can Recollect Happened In A Video Game
Remember that time when all I had left was my pistol and I took out the entire other team with one headshot each and didn’t get hit once? Really cool. I should write a book about it.
You Write Fan Fiction
You just couldn’t handle Fox cancelling Firefly. Continue the story with your horrible writing. Play out that sex fantasy between the two main characters you were dying to see but never got the chance. Maybe the characters will meet a new friend who is totally coincidentally the person you wish you were in real life. Now go post your awesome stories somewhere on the internet and watch another rerun of Deep Space Nine. P.S. If you read Fan Fic it’s equally horrible you’re just less creative and just subjecting yourself to someone else’s fantasy.