“Get the Cliché Out of the Way”

My First Rule in Picture Taking

Typical shot of the monument (Rubin, 1984) although i did try to use the window frames to make it more interesting or different…

And so, the lesson

Don’t fight that desire to shoot the obvious shot, particularly if you’re not on film. Digital photography makes the cost of exploration almost nil. My podcast co-host Suzanne Fritz-Hanson came up with a pithy way to describe the phenomenon: “Get the cliché out of the way.” Once you’ve shot that horrible, obvious, utterly unoriginal cliché, you are set free. Give yourself that gift.

Coit Tower, (at left) pretty much like most Coit Tower shots; and then later that night. (Rubin, 2015)
Nothing says “Paris” like the Eiffel Tower; but once I got the more typical presentations out of the way, I was able to play around with more nuanced ways to include it. (Rubin, 2016)

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Living a creative life, a student of high magic, and hopefully growing wiser as I age. • Ex-Lucasfilm, Netflix, Adobe. • Here are my stories and photos.

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M. H. Rubin

Living a creative life, a student of high magic, and hopefully growing wiser as I age. • Ex-Lucasfilm, Netflix, Adobe. • Here are my stories and photos.