Conclusion - Seven Deadly Sins Of Photography

The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.
- Brooks Atkinson, 1951, "Once Around the Sun"

My series of photography sins is at an end. I hope you have enjoyed them. I've put links to them all here so it's easy to bookmark should you want to do so. The time has come now to stop being negative and get down of my soap box. There will soon follow a more positive series covering the seven corresponding virtues of photography.

Envy - The belief that that the camera makes the image not the person. Compounded by the delusion that better cameras make you a better photographer.

Gluttony - The foolish belief that if some equipment is good then more is better. The technical obsessive without a creative soul.

Greed - Photographers with the delusion that they must impede other photographers. They resenting the success of other creative people and see them as a threat.

Lust - The desire to mimic another photographer or artist that is so strong it destroys your own creative personality.

Pride - The mistaken belief that you know best and are the best photographer in the universe. When in reality your report card might read "Must try harder".

Sloth - The belief your failure to set the world on fire with your images is due to factors other than you making no effort whatsoever.

Wrath - Creative impatience and self delusion taken out on other people in a negative, intolerant angry way.

Wrath - Seven Deadly Sins Of Photography

Wrath is disproportionate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred, frustration and anger. These feelings manifest as a denial of the truth, both to others and to ourselves. Our anger is often our first reaction to the problems of others. Impatience with the faults of others is often related to this.

The seventh and final deadly sin of photography has two distinct aspects, both of which will negatively impact your photography.

The first effect is in your dealings with people as subjects for photography. Imagine for a second being photographed by a frustrated angry photographer. Any little thing that's wrong is a major issue and it's all your fault! Would you like to be part of this experience? Would you relax and be yourself? Can you give your all to a photographer like this? Finally, in all honesty do you feel the best image of you could be made in this circumstance? I suspect you know the answer to this already. The tension and stress it would create between the belligerent photographer yourself would begin to show.

With any picture featuring people as subjects the relationship between the models and the photographer is critical. Tension and negativity show in the end result. It's because of this that a wrathful photographer renders themselves unsuitable and ineffectual when photographing people. Whole swathes of photography become denied to them. This will of course only increase their frustration and they will probably blame everyone else as usual. So the first lesson is Don't be that angry photographer. Kind words and patience go a long way. People who show the virtue of kindness are usually the best people photographers as people enjoy being around them.

The second trait is more subtle but can be very insidious when the wrathful photographer uses it. Sadly they use it freely on less experienced photographers or on their subjects. This trait is the destructive criticism of others. They very fond of delivering wholely negative critique in order to vent their anger. They don't like to receive any advice of critisism themselves. Even very reasonable and helpful remarks will be met with a vitriolic response. They certainly won't listen if any advice is given (See the sin of Pride). Criticism is their crutch. It makes them feel better and absolves them of responsibility for their shortcomings.

You need to watch very carefully for unfounded critisism. More so if you're starting out in photography. At the start a series negative and unfounded critiques from these wrathful people can severely erode your creative confidence and dampen your enthusiasm. Worse still you might get stuck in the thankless rut of trying to appease these pompous idiots. The trick is to spot the wrathful critic early on. This is suprisingly easy as a wrathful critic offers only negative thoughts or an insult in the guise of opinion. No advice will be forthcoming nor any indication of where you got things right or how to improve your work. Tact will not be in evidence at any time, under any circumstance. What they say will only hurt and not be designed to help it will make you feel confused and upset without justification. Any questioning of their negative attitude will meet yet more hostility. If you get sucked in then before you know it you're in their world being angry and frustrated right back at them. Moral of the story? Just walk away. It feels better removes their power and proves you the better individual.

Greed - Seven Deadly Sins Of Photography

This is about more than being acquisitive and demanding. It's about NOT letting others get the credit or praise for their part. It is NEVER giving without having expectations of the other person. Greed wants to get its 'pound of flesh' or a bit more...

Artistic creativity is a strange business but in photography it gets even stranger. I think this may be due to insecurity about whether it's an art or a technology? Maybe it's due to this worry that it was in photography where I first encountered creative greed. And let me say that to me the sin of greed is most offensive to me. I shall elaborate...

The reason I started writing these articles was to help people. Plain and simple. I just wanted to occasionally shed some light or make something click for people that are where I was once. This is due to my early experiences in photography where I found help difficult to come by. You see I first discovered the phenomenon of creative greed as I started out. As I had been around artists all my young life and never come across this phenomenon it was something of a rude awakening.

I'd had a camera for only a week when I stumbled across a professional photographer. As I was really struggling I asked them for help with a very basic problem. It required about 15 seconds of their valuable time. Instead of an answer I got a very public mocking. I was left feeling a little red faced, non the wiser and very patronised. I'd had my first encounter with a greedy photographer.

In contrast in the many years since this negative experience I have asked many other photographers many questions. Usually I have received a warm reception, obtained great advice and encouragement and in some cases formed lasting friendships. It was only later with experience and hindsight I realised the difference between these two schools of creativity.

Photographers who suffer the malaise of creative greed have the fear that they must keep all information and skill for themselves. That some how if they help anyone they may have a success that is rightly theirs. They actually resent your interest in photography and your success is a threat to them. These people are actually not that great creatively. Their greed and selfishness only masks a deeper insecurity and often a poor ability.

Mistakenly these lost souls think they can create in a vacuum. They think by holding people back they move forwards. They do this by taking from everyone and give nothing back. Sadly for these creative vampires it's their loss. They fail to see that one of the great things about being creative is when you put a couple of creative people together in a room and they are both generous with each other then the results are fabulous and the time spent benefits all concerned. Where as if you remain afflicted with creative greed you end up walking a lonely road with very little to inspire you. You stagnate and your work reflects this.

Gluttony - Seven Deadly Sins Of Photography

Gluttony: does not accept the natural limits of your needs. It does not preserve any natural balance. This does not pertain only to food, but to entertainment and the pursuit of material goods...

In photography the sin of equipment gluttony is often compounded by the other deadly sin of camera envy. The results are negative and counter productive though for different reasons.

When a case of photographic gluttony begins the sinner in question begins to labour under the delusion that if some camera equipment is good then more is even better!

Now this can be OK if said person takes the time and effort to fully learn and utilize all that equipment. However in reality they tend to do one of two things and both are bad.

Option 1: They become totally equipment obsessed. The technical brain dominates the creative brain. Their piggy eyes see only into their camera bag they never look up and see the beauty around them. Photography becomes about the obtaining of camera equipment.
Option 2: The confusion of so many creative tools available causes endless mistakes, missed opportunities and botched images. Their potential is hindered not helped by their gluttonous acquisition of photographic equipment.

I'll end on a true story. A few years ago I went to London on a course in candid street photography. I arrived with one small discrete camera on a wrist strap. It had a small prime lens mounted on the front. There was a small flash in my pocket for any abstracts I saw along the way. In short I was mobile, discrete and blended in nicely.

Another course member exploded onto the scene with around six huge white telephoto lenses, two huge professional camera bodies, an enormous backpack and a ridiculous 'photo-vest'. He was somewhat 'high key'.

Within minutes of arrival and comparison the equipment junkie proceeded to mock me and several other delegates for twenty minutes solid. It quickly became apparent he was delusionaly impressed with the size of his own equipment and had assumed this view was universal. I tried to explain my choice of light, discrete minimal kit. I felt it was more suited after all. In the end we just sat in silence as the gear glutton pontificated from the top of his camera bag.

We spent half a day on our classroom lesson then in the afternoon we went out on assignment into the city with our cameras. The gear glutton crept noisily into a small square and raised his gargantuan camera to his eye. A small teenage boy looked shocked and pointed at his lens with the exclamation, "what in hell are you doing with the Hubble telescope!?!?". Everyone immediately noticed and most people laughed aloud. His candid moment was completely blown. This or similar happened all afternoon. His photographs where predictably poor.

The moral of the story is often less is more. Stick with what you need and what's appropriate.

Lust - Seven Deadly Sins Of Photography

LUST: Self control and self mastery prevent pleasure from killing the soul by suffocation. Lust is the self-destructive drive for pleasure out of proportion to its worth. Sex, power, or image can be used well, but without knowledge of yourself they tend to go out of control...

The photographic sin of lust is a strange sin indeed. It is often the subject of much discussion amongst photographers. It manifests in the form of an unsuccessful and un-original photographer. One who is so influenced and so enamored with a particular photographers style that they seek to emulate every aspect of it. Their lust to actually be that photographer takes over and they cease to be their own creative entity. This manifests in their endless dry and technical emulation of their idol.

Of course they will only ever manage to be a pale immitation of the person they placed on the pedestal. Worse still, as is the way with all meaningless lust, their loss of an individual visual identity damages them. Their passion for photography dies and the tiny seedling of originality withers in the ground.

To make a distinction from this erroneous path I'll add this footnote: By all means you should look at the work of many other creative individuals. You can draw great inspiration and pleasure from the experience. One can learn and grow simply by being open to a creative experience as represented by another. In fact being honest with yourself for a moment is it not a natural thing to want others to appreciate your photographs? So would it not be hypocritical to not extend that courtesy to others?

This is where it should end though. A healthy love of the work of other people tempered with a knowledge of yourself. Not a lust to be another person at the loss of your own creative identity.

Sloth - Seven Deadly Sins Of Photography

SLOTH: The other sins work together to deaden the senses so we first become slow to respond then drift completely into the sleep of complacency. In short we become a lazy good for nothing photographer.

This is really simple so I'll keep it brief. If you don't have your camera with you you can't take pictures. If you don't go out looking for pictures they will not come and knock on your door begging for you to pop out and take them. If you don't make an effort to find the pictures all around you, while moaning that there is nothing to photograph, then you are guilty of the sin of photographic sloth.

The cure is simple. Get up off lazy complacent backside, put down the pie and turn off the television. Make an effort. No one took a great picture by sitting doing nothing. You'll find Ansell Adams actually walked about a bit to take pictures. In order to practice what I preach I got up at an ungodly hour on a cold and windy day to take the photo in this article. I could have stayed in bed but I personally think it was worth the trip.

NOTE: The sin of photographic sloth should not be confused with photographing sloths which is a noble though slightly obscure pass time of wildlife photographers.

Pride - Seven Deadly Sins Of Photography

PRIDE: Seeing ourselves as something we are not. Pride and vanity are also collaborative. If someones pride really gets your goat, then you have a lot of pride.

In photography the sin of pride is a devastating sin. It will prevent you learning. It will prevent you accepting advice. It will make many a potential mentor shun you without you ever realising they have. Your development into a talented photographer will simply never occur. And why is that you ask? There's a simple and obvious answer to the question. If you are so prideful that you already believe you are a great photographer why would you struggle to actually be one? If you are so vain as to believe you already know best how can you ever listen and learn to a more experienced photographer? How can you ever see virtue in the work of anyone else if you are already the greatest? Also why on earth would anyone want to pause and help anyone so arrogant as yourself?


Now opening up to the fact that you are not the greatest at landscape, portrait, street or whatever type of photographer is difficult. You must subsume that huge ego. John Cleese once described this process of divesting yourself of ego as going to sleep thinking you're Atilla The Hun but waking up to find your a Budgie. Now it's very difficult to accept you are not always perfect but the benefits are enormous. If you are open to the fact you are flawed and have room to improve. You begin to strive to improve. You begin to be honest and examine your work more critically. You learn to listen and to take on board the opinions of others. That's how you grow as a photographer. It's how you approach greatness.


If you follow that advice then I am sure that one day you will be very proud of your accomplishments in photography. On that day being justifiably happy with what you've worked hard to accomplish is an entirely different ball game to just deluding yourself about your own greatness.


PS: The picture in the article is:

A/. The greatest picture ever taken.
B/. Has been posterized to hide the fact it's out of focus.

Which point of view will help me improve the most?

Envy - Seven Deadly Sins Of Photography

ENVY: Resents the good others receive or even might receive. Envy irrationaly ignores the reasons for other peoples good fortune and despises the success of others.

Camera envy is one of the deadly sins of photography for a very good reason. It gives people the delusional excuse that if only they had the same camera as photographer x,y or z then they would take the same wonderful pictures as them. This insidious little delusion manages to insult the talent of the accomplished photographer by crediting only their equipment while simultaneously excusing them from responsibility for their own creative ability.

Rather than argue about the importance of what camera you use I will simply quote three professional photographers I interviewed recently and you'll see the pattern emerge yourself.

Deutsche Börse nominee Philippe Chancel when speaking about his work was interrupted by the cry of 'Great prints! What camera do you use?' looking very confused for a moment he said the following.

35mm. I don't know what one sorry, it's not important.

Philippe found the use of repeated motifs and symbols to tell a story far more important than any camera.

Johnathan Taylor a successful photo journalist when asked about his cameras of choice was using film cameras of a 30 year old design. The kind even a mild camera snob would ignore. His reason was relevant to his trade and revealed something about why he is good at what he does.

I like them as they have a small body so your face isn’t covered

Jonathan knew it was far more important to avoid creating a barrier with his subjects than to obsess over the best camera.

Hellen Van Meene brought a smile to my face and made a very relevant point at the same time. To quote from her own FAQ's:

Hellen started making photos on plastic snapshot camera she got from Santa Claus. She advises to get to know about color in the darkroom like she did, or simply by experimenting with Photoshop (like she does now, but based on what she learned among the chemicals in the darkroom). Learning to view the world like a photographer is the only thing that matters, not the hardware, film or settings used.

Hellen's full attention is on her connection to her models not what camera she has.

The moral of the story is covet not thy neighbors camera just focus on the content of your images, your approach to your chosen subjects and then really work at it. The rest will come and it won't ever matter what camera you use.