Pet Peeves

Yokosuka Mike

Yokosuka Mike

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Pet Peeve: something that a person finds especially annoying.

When it comes to photography do you have a pet peeve?

All the best,
Mike
 
Yokosuka_Mike said:
Pet Peeve: something that a person finds especially annoying.

When it comes to photography do you have a pet peeve?

All the best,
Mike
Click to expand...
A lack of clear space defining the main subject of my photo.

preview_L1001277.jpeg


The overlap between this guy’s head and the column bothers me no end. But he was actually asleep, so i could hardly get him to move left a little and back closer to me a little. Oh well. But then some fall almost perfectly into place, irrespective:

preview_L1000424.jpeg
 
Lens hoods and filters that bind hopelessly while trying to make changes out in the field. Of course, they unscrew effortlessly once I get home.
Do I get a second peeve? Clip-on neck straps that somehow twist themselves around in the camera bag. Some manufacturers have designed their attachment points to prevent this; no reason why they all can't.
Third peeve? Well, we could all go on and on... Being old and grumpy, I have a limitless supply.
 
Freakscene said:
A lack of clear space defining the main subject of my photo.

View attachment 4828520


The overlap between this guy’s head and the column bothers me no end. But he was actually asleep, so i could hardly get him to move left a little and back closer to me a little. Oh well. But then some fall almost perfectly into place, irrespective:

View attachment 4828521
Click to expand...
Voltaire said that "Perfect is the enemy of good". The photo of the sleeping man is damn good. Be proud of it, without qualification.
I don't know how many times I've set up to take a landscape shot, with beautiful light playing rapidly over the land. In the course of waiting for the light to get better, closer to "perfect", the light has died and I've been left with nothing. One of my pet peeves about myself, actually.
 
Yokosuka_Mike said:
My pet peeves are horizons that are not level and verticals that are not vertical.
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...especially when the sea is involved. If you're taking a photo and the sea is visible, GET THAT HORIZON STRAIGHT.

Sure, we all mess up from time to time in taking the photo, but it takes all of two seconds to rotate and crop slightly in Photoshop or in the darkroom.

My main bugbear: dust and scratches. I hate cleaning the stuff from film scans, but not as much as I hate seeing people post film scans that are absolutely raddled with dust. Do people just not take pride in their work? Jesus.
 
People loitering around.

When I was younger, I'd make photos of everything in my town and didn't care much about people or cars being in my photo. Much later, I'd go to car shows or go to someplace where I want to photograph a building, and there'd be one or two people just hanging around that I knew I didn't want to preserve in my photo. Sometimes they wear clothing with obnoxious crap written on it. They hang around so long, they just won't go away and I'm waiting and waiting.
 
The location of the video record button on the Sony Nex-5 and (to a lesser degree) Nex-7. Lets just say that I had a lot of short videos of the camera holding steady on a scene, followed immediately by a terminating string of expletives uttered by myself.
 
I hate to see good photos ruined by badly placed backgrounds like telephone poles growing out of the subject’s head. There was a huge advertisement campaign some decade ago featuring a runner with a light pole dead center.
 
Hazy viewfinders that are too dim for easy focusing, and too difficult to access for cleaning (I'm looking at you, Japanese fixed lens RFs)

"I haven't tested the meter because I don't have a battery"

Missed exposures because I forgot to double check what shutter speed/aperture I'd set (meterless cameras)

"Street photography" that's just random pictures of people on the street

When people talk about how a lens "draws" (sorry if I offend but this just sounds pretentious)
 
Yokosuka_Mike said:
My pet peeves are horizons that are not level and verticals that are not vertical.

I spend a lot of time editing my pictures to make sure that my verticals and horizontals are perfect or as close to perfect as can be. For some reason this is very important to me.
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A shift lens can be good for the soul.
This summer, I think I've finally found a hand-holdable film combination, having picked up a cheap Nikon F2 Photomic with a broken meter.
Replaced the prism with a x6 magnification DW-2, dropped in a grid screen and bought a 35mm PC-Nikkor.
It very satisfying squaring up the image in viewfinder and obtaining a directly printable negative that needs no cropping or corrections and includes the rebate.

A minor pet peeve : although Ricoh and Fuji include 1:1 square jpeg modes, why is it not possible to shift that square up and drown within the 3:2 capture area emulating a shift lens on 6x6.
 
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