A lot of the time, the first question people ask when they see a photo they like is “what camera did you use?”, “what settings did you use?”, “what presets did you use in Lr?”. These questions are about receipes, not photography.
But photography rules aren’t recipes, and treating them as such is precisely why most people’s work remains forgettable. Not that I think my photos are great and unforgettable, obviously. But I see what is wrong in asking those questions.
We live in an age of instant gratification where complexity gets flattened into listicles and how-to guides. Want to be a photographer? Follow these seven rules. Want better portraits? Use this aperture setting. Want dramatic landscapes? Apply this filter preset. The internet groans under the weight of photography “recipes” promising immediate results. And man YT has a lot to answer for!
This isn’t a generational failing, though I’ll admit my first instinct was to blame millennials and Gen Z for their apparent inability to sit with uncertainty. But honestly? The boomers picking up cameras in retirement are just as guilty. They want their camera club workshop to hand them a foolproof system for award-winning images. I’ve seen it so many times in astrophotography over the last few years. Everyone, regardless of age, seems convinced that artistic expression operates like a cookbook.
The recipe mentality reflects something deeper: our collective impatience with the learning process itself. We’ve forgotten that mastery requires time, failure, and the uncomfortable period where you understand the theory but can’t execute it consistently. We want to skip the apprenticeship and jump straight to expertise.
Photography rules function more like maps than recipes. The rule of thirds doesn’t guarantee a compelling composition any more than knowing the location of Manchester guarantees an interesting journey there. Rules provide coordinates, not destinations.
Think about how you actually use a map: it shows you where you are, where you want to go, and the various routes available. If you know how to read it properly, it reveals the terrain you’ll encounter, the elevation changes, potential hazards. But it cannot tell you what you’ll actually see along the way, how the light will hit that particular hillside at 4 PM, how green the grass might be aong the roads, or whether the local pub will be worth stopping at.
Photography rules work the same way. They establish the boundaries of the medium, reveal technical possibilities, and suggest where certain approaches might lead. The rule of thirds maps compositional territory. Understanding depth of field charts the relationship between aperture, distance, and focus. Knowing how different ISO settings affect grain gives you a sense of the textural landscape available.
But rules cannot predict the specific moment when that perfect expression crosses your subject’s face, or whether the storm clouds gathering behind your landscape will create drama or simply obscure everything in grey. They cannot tell you which of three technically correct compositions will resonate with viewers, or whether breaking every rule you know will produce your best work.
I’ve spent a long time learning to read the photographic map, and the most valuable discoveries happened when I understood the terrain well enough to venture off the marked paths. You cannot break rules effectively until you understand what they’re trying to achieve and why they usually work.
The photographer who religiously applies the rule of thirds might produce technically competent images, but they’re following a route someone else mapped out. The photographer who understands why the rule of thirds creates visual tension can then deliberately create different kinds of tension by abandoning it entirely.
This is why the recipe approach fails so spectacularly. Recipes assume identical ingredients will produce identical results. Photography works with light, emotion, timing, and human perception. These variables shift constantly. What worked brilliantly in yesterday’s golden hour might look artificial in this morning’s harsh sun.
The real issue isn’t that people want guidance. The issue is that they want certainty in a medium built on uncertainty. They want to eliminate the variables that make photography interesting in the first place.
I understand the impulse. Photography appears deceptively simple from the outside. Point, shoot, magic happens. But the gap between taking pictures and making photographs requires navigating uncertainty, developing intuition, and accepting that most of your attempts will be mediocre.
This is where the map metaphor becomes crucial. You wouldn’t expect a road map to eliminate all surprises from your journey. The unexpected detour, the scenic overlook you hadn’t planned for, the weather that transforms your entire route. These aren’t failures of the map. They’re the reason you travel.
The photographers I admire most treat rules as starting points for investigation rather than final destinations. They understand that technical proficiency creates the foundation for expression, not the expression itself. They’ve learned the rules so thoroughly that they can deploy or abandon them intuitively.
This doesn’t mean rules are worthless. Quite the opposite. A skilled photographer uses rules the way a jazz musician uses scales: as a vocabulary for improvisation rather than a script to recite. The musician who never learned scales will struggle to communicate complex ideas. The musician who never moves beyond scales will bore everyone to tears.
Photography rules provide the grammar of visual communication. Grammar matters enormously, but it’s what you do with it that creates meaning. You can write technically perfect sentences that say nothing interesting, or you can bend grammatical rules to create emphasis, rhythm, and emotional impact.
The path forward isn’t to abandon rules but to understand their true purpose: creating a foundation solid enough to support genuine exploration. Stop looking for recipes. Start learning to read the map. The most interesting photographs happen in the territory between what the rules predict and what actually unfolds in front of your lens.
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