Hard truths from a contrarian who’s been around the block with a camera strapped to his shoulder.
1. School is for Suckers
You don’t need a diploma to make a photograph worth a damn
Photography school is mostly a waste of time and money. You’ll spend tens of thousands learning how to take “assignments” that have no bearing on real life. What you really need is the world itself — the chaos of the street, the light at 6am, the guts to ask a stranger if you can take their portrait. Those lessons don’t come in a lecture hall. They come from doing the work, day after day, with nobody holding your hand. Save the tuition. Buy gas, print your work, travel, screw up, learn, repeat.
2. Better Human, Better Photographer
The lens sees what your soul won’t
The myth is that photography is about cameras, settings, and technique. It’s not. It’s about being human — deeply human. Your camera is just a mirror pointed outward. If you’re shallow, disconnected, or cynical, your photos will reek of it. If you’re empathetic, curious, open — your images will glow. The head and the heart need to be connected, otherwise your shots are just hollow pixels. You want to improve as a photographer? Work on yourself first.
3. The Gear Delusion
Cameras don’t make photographs — photographers do
That shiny new iPhone? That $6,000 DSLR? None of them will magically transform you. A bad photograph taken with the latest gear is still a bad photograph. Buying another camera just makes you another camera owner. The magic is you. The moment you stop hiding behind equipment and start owning your perspective, your photography changes forever. Until then, you’re just playing dress-up with expensive toys.
4. Knobs, Dials, and Bullshit
The real craft is not on the camera body
Every school and YouTube tutorial obsesses over buttons, dials, knobs, menus, settings. But none of that means anything if you don’t understand light, color, and design. The hard truth? Memorizing the difference between f/5.6 and f/8 won’t make your photos memorable. Obsess instead over how shadow shapes a cheekbone, how red pops against turquoise, how negative space breathes. These are the eternal principles. Everything else is noise.
5. The Myth of the Shortcut
There is no hack to mastery, only the grind
Everyone wants the cheat code. Spoiler alert: there isn’t one. There’s no magical shortcut, hack, or secret workshop that will instantly elevate your work. Photography takes unrelenting energy, discipline, work, and experimentation. It’s a grind. It’s showing up when you’re tired. It’s failing publicly, again and again. The real secret — if you can call it that — is endurance. Outlast everyone else. Stay curious. Stay hungry. Put in the damn miles.
6. Pixel Prison
Free your photos from the digital cage
The craft of photography isn’t realized until you print your work. Let me say that again: if your photos never leave your camera roll, you haven’t finished the job. Printing forces you to reckon with your images in a way screens never do. The flaws scream louder. The successes feel richer. Stop hoarding files. Free your photos. Hang them on walls, hand them to strangers, stick them to your fridge. A photo isn’t truly born until it breathes on paper.
7. Style Finds You
Chasing style is like chasing your own shadow
Every student wants a style. They want it now, as if it’s a filter you can buy. Here’s the bitter pill: style finds you, you don’t find it. It sneaks up on you after years of shooting, editing, living. One day you’ll look back at your work and see the fingerprints — the quirks, the obsessions, the colors you can’t resist, the angles you always return to. That’s your style. You can’t force it. You earn it.
8. Kill the Comparisons
Stop scrolling, start listening to yourself
They don’t teach you how corrosive comparison is. You’ll spend half your life scrolling, looking over your shoulder, measuring yourself against other photographers. Stop. The only voice worth listening to is that still small one inside you. That whisper that tells you to stop the car, turn left, wait for the light. Trust it. Your gut is your compass. Comparison is poison. Focus on your own damn lane.
9. The Myth of Arrival
You don’t “become” a photographer — you keep becoming one
You never arrive. You never check the box. You never get to say “I’m done, I’ve made it.” Photography is not a destination. It’s a process, a journey, a relentless act of becoming. The second you think you’ve arrived, your work flatlines. Stay a student. Stay uncomfortable. Stay alive to the mystery of seeing. That’s the only way to keep your photography from rotting into cliché.
10. Bonus Truth: Photography is Life Training
The lessons are bigger than the frame
Here’s the hidden gem no school ever teaches: photography is life training in disguise. It teaches patience (waiting for light), courage (asking for a shot), humility (accepting failure), and presence (being right here, right now). It teaches you to see beauty in the mundane and meaning in the overlooked. Whether you call yourself a “photographer” or not doesn’t matter. This practice rewires your brain to live differently. And isn’t that the real point?
Final Frame
Here’s the truth no glossy brochure will tell you: photography is not about tuition, tricks, or tech. It’s about being alive, awake, and willing to work harder than anyone else to see the world differently. You don’t need permission. You don’t need a degree. What you need is grit, honesty, curiosity, and the guts to trust yourself.
Everything else? That’s the shit they never teach you in photography school.
Click.
Jack.
