Is composition a psyop?

I think about this a lot, and the more photographs I take, the more I wonder if it is.

Maybe the photography community is actually hypercompetitive, and one way to have the “better” photography is to convince everyone that the perfectly composed photograph is the best photograph.

But through my own experimentation, photographing thousands and thousands of photographs every month, I’ve found almost the opposite.

The photographs with the quote-unquote worst composition are often my favorites.

Blown highlights. Crushed shadows. Sun flares. Crooked horizons. All the things conventional photography might tell us are wrong are often exactly what I find interesting.

So I think about this a lot.

Are we being dragged down by people trying to win the photography battle?

It’s probably just a wacky conspiracy theory, but hey, maybe there’s something to it.

PERFECT GETS BORING

The more photography I look at, the more I notice how much of it is perfectly composed.

And once you see too much of anything, it becomes boring. It becomes repetitive.

That’s one of the things I find interesting about Garry Winogrand’s street photographs. The horizons are often slightly tilted.

Was he doing that intentionally?

I don’t know.

Maybe it was simply a byproduct of the way he photographed. Bring the camera up quickly, make the photograph, and keep moving.

It doesn’t really matter.

What interests me is that people can praise a photograph with a crooked horizon while simultaneously telling photographers to keep their horizons perfectly straight.

I have no problem with a straight horizon.

I just think there should be variety.

Why can’t you like the straight horizon and the crooked horizon?