Nope. Educate yourself with fact-based knowledge. It’ll pay off in the long run if you know what you’re actually talking about.
As someone who occasionally does professional photography/ filming, the auto setting on your camera is fine if you’re just snapping pics. Where you’d want manual is if you were taking a larger series of photos and wanted to apply the same effects/ processing to the batch.
the automatic setting might give you 1/30 of a second when photographing fast moving animals or 1/500 with aperture 2.8 when photographing landscapes, neither of which will give you good photos :/
Aperture, shutter speed and ISO aren’t very hard to understand and applying them correctly will give you a lot better photos.
Hey kids, do you like violence?
Wanna see me stick nine inch nails through each one of my eyelids?
Wanna copy me and do exactly like I did?
Try 'cid and get fucked up worse than my life is?
Also, speaking of tracing stuff. Your phone is basically a light table! You can pull up the picture on your phone and trace it. Use a light touch so you don’t accidentally zoom. Computer monitors work with bigger stuff. I did that with this pigeon meme, and I’m pretty thrilled with it.
Random picture from a non-native: what does “tracing a picture” mean in this context?
I couldn’t find the meaning
It means putting a blank piece of paper over the picture and using the picture to help you draw on the sheet. So instead of free-drawing a pigeon you are copying/tracing it.
Ahhh, thanks! It’s important not to scratch the screen, though - paper makes a poor screen protection :D
me: does a thing because I like it and I get kinda not shit at it.
Everyone else: HaVe You cOnSIDErEd DoinG ThaT PRofEssIONaLLY? YOu cOULd mAKE so MUCH MOneY.!1!
me: fuck off. I have a job. I do this for me.
everyone else: Do What yOU LOve anD You’lL neVER worK A dAy IN Your life.!
me: turn your hobby into your job and you don’t have a hobby anymore. There’s no faster way to hate your passion than to monetize it.
I lost interest in photography for several years because of this. And because I’m a slow learner, I did the same thing with woodworking An extra few bucks doing a random thing or two is nice, but the side hustle gig mentality is toxic
There’s a word for that: jobby
As you said, it’s not healthy to turn every hobby into a jobby. The best thing about hobbies is the lack of urgency and technical criteria. The whole point is to do it for fun.
Anyone who tells you to manually set everything in photography is silly. I took a photography class and made sure to thoroughly read a professional photographer’s breakdown of my camera and how to operate it.
The only reason I’ve seen suggested why you should use manual mode is if you want a very specific shot that the automatic settings won’t allow you to get. You know, like everything else. Automatic modes (i.e. aperture modes mainly) are there for a reason and while it’s good to know how to manually set your parameters and read the light meter, you realistically don’t want to be fiddling with your camera while whatever subject you want to photograph is potentially changing (for portrait or still shots its not as bad, but if you need to do any form of quick shooting you’re only hampering yourself). Do I still use manual mode sometimes? Of course! I was taught how to use it and when I need it it is extremely helpful. But I typically only need it for night photography or if I want a specific effect (which can often be achieved with shutter mode but I never really use that).
I use manual when I’m shooting RAW and want to get better control for shutter speed. I like to run under exposed settings between one or two steps since I can just up the exposure just fine in post but I can get much more consistent focus in less than ideal lighting.
I can’t speak for newer cameras, though. As the last camera that I used is released on 2012. The auto settings on that camera (Pentax K5-II) is atrocious.
That’s fair. My camera (Nikon D300) is from 2007 but it functions wonderfully and the auto settings are usually very good, with me only having to adjust the exposure or white balance occasionally.
This is the end result of no one actually understanding the notion of “practice makes perfect” and probably some other shit that kids are internalizing these days that I am not privy to.
It’s also really helpful to read again.
No one is perfect, people just get good at stuff by doing it a lot (and can also get worse if they stop doing it). So many friends of mine are always talking about doing creative stuff and how hard it is and yet they never actually just take the first step to try anything.
I’m a 38 yo straight dude with a potty mouth and a bad attitude. I love sewing. Idky and I’m terrible at it but it gives me the good feels so I practice as much as my brain will allow.
Yeah well you’re also part of what we fight the patriarchy for. It’s sad that people don’t thing someone like you might enjoy sewing
Also a dude, sewing is fucking great! Thinking back, I’m pretty sure I learned to sew long before I learned any other forms of making, childhood me made lots of felt toys and crafts for friends and family because materials were cheap, accessable, and pretty easy to work with. I love being able to take a pile of fabric and make it into something functional, or at the very least mend my clothes to get more life out of them.
I’ve been playing guitar for 25 years and I kinda suck. I’ve forgotten everything I know about music theory, I don’t know any songs and my fingers just don’t move that fast. But I enjoy coming home and making some noise for 15-20 minutes. I just move my hands around and make a lot of bad sounds until I start making a good sounding riff then I’m done.
That’s how I used to play guitar, too. I got a cheapo sound pedal with a bunch of effects and premade back beats. Try to play some songs that I know. Sound bad. Keep doing it until I get bored or it sounds kinda cool once. That’s enough for the week.
Am I ever gonna be anywhere close to decent? Nope. Do I care? Nope.
Every time I share my photography with my parents, they suggest new ways I should be selling it. Just let me enjoy the pretty birds, dad
At least your parents are supportive.
Every time id share some creation of mine in my late teens and early 20s with my mom, I’d just hear a random smattering of reports on shit her “friends” (vague acquaintances) had done with no acknowledgement of what I had created.
At least the skills I picked up over the years landed me a job where the things I make are objectively crap and everyone who I don’t really care about sings my praises.
That’s also a nice compliment though, I.e. it’s so good they think people would pay for it!
Sometimes those model kits actually just won’t stay together without a bit of glue.
I have a job where the consequences of making a mistake are Significant.
I have a crafting hobby because I can suck at it with no consequences at all, and sometimes I make something cool.
My proud non technical ass is proud of my duct tape homelab. I have no idea what I’m doing and it is my favorite of many ADHD driven hobbies.
please define duct tape homelab
pedantic side rant: Adhesive tape with a plastic covered cloth backing was never and will never be duct tape. It was originally called duck tape because the plastic coating made water run off it like it runs off a ducks back. If you use this product as duct tape your going to have a bad time, it will develop cracking in the plastic portion of the tape and drying of the adhesive, both of these lead to ducts leaking and higher utility bills. Proper duct tape is a metal foil with an adhesive developed for the application. This leads to joints that stay tight long term and lower utility bills. IT’S NOT DUCT TAPE IT’S DUCK TAPE even if the packaging says it is duct tape. It should always be called duck tape (not always Duck™ tape) no matter what brand. It was named duck tape because water runs off it like it runs off of a ducks back, and that predates the Duck™ brand. As for the worry about confusing duck tape with Duck™ tape, nobody is confused when you ask for a kleenex or a bandaid no matter what brand it is. I spent to much time on this, I’m done ranting.
tldr: read the bold text and be less lazy
@blazeknave I promise I’m not trying to be a smartass in response to your comment.
All these years correcting my child like tendency and saying duct, but it was duck all along? I always wondered why I’ve never seen ducts taped together. I appreciate you.
God this is so true. I teach compuster science, and I always make a point in one lecture to show the students how many tabs full of basic questions I have to open when grading their assignments. Nobody can memorize all of this, and it’s so important to shake off that feeling of not being good enough just because you have to look something up.
Career software developer - Years and years ago I stopped reading programming manuals and trying to remember the syntax of languages. I just google the same basic things over and over, and often paste & edit example code.
I like the Dune movies and the sci-fi miniseries. The world building is cool. I tried to read the book. Nope. Not for me at all.
