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Thoughts about photography
Absolutism in Photography
Like most any other topic you could think of, photography has its fair share of absolutism. Just look in any social media community for photography and you’ll soon find posts and comments such as “you need to shoot RAW” or “prime lenses are the best” or “never go above 800 ISO”. Of course on the same post there will invariably be comments that take up the opposite position to the stated absolute and it’s that that really gets to me.
Charles G. Haacker has a few amazing articles looking more in depth at absolutism in photography such as Absolutism in Photography — “Spray ’n’ Pray.” and others which I highly recommend for a more comprehensive look at some of the topics we often here stated as absolutes on social media.
You see, these statements made online as absolutes are really just opinions. Everyone has their opinion one way or another and there is nothing wrong with that. That opinion could be formed from years of experience or it could be formed on the basis of limited experience or even just the opinions of others expressed repeatedly on social media.
People make statements like “never go above ISO 800” but in reality the choice of ISO to use depends on a…
