Lighting Sacrilege? *UPDATED*

I had a feeling I might provoke a Strobist with my post, Reflectors: The Other Way to Light. (Oh well. At least it gives me something to write about-- "something to write about" being one of the hardest things about maintaining a blog... for over three years now.)

Anyway...

As a result of the aforementioned update, someone named "Anonymous" commented: "I would agree that some of the Strobist lighting "look" is repetitive, but you have to remember, yours is already SO much so. To me, it's boring."

Although I went out of my way to praise David Hobby and his Strobist site--his site is, after all, one of my faves and I admire David greatly--I still made a comment that was slightly critical of, what seems like, an oft-seen, generic, Strobist lighting style.

Sacrilege? Hell, I don't know. Dishing a dis? Certainly not intended.

You see, it seems that more than a few Strobist readers follow the lighting doctrines and gospels of David Hobby with near religious fervor. Nothing wrong with that. As a result, many formerly average and pedestrian snapshot takers are now producing images of exceptional quality. Personally, I think the world is a better place with less "photographers" who suck at photography. Go team!

But we all know what happens when you question, even question in such a minor way, a religion's beliefs... even a religion whose precepts are all about photographic lighting-- Often, it ain't pretty.

Perhaps some of you might be thinking I'm overreacting to the comment made by the anonymous reader? Well, perhaps I am. Or, perhaps I'm just in a pissy mood today. (It happens.) But I think I've written confessed, numerous times, that my work is often repetitive and boring, i.e., because I shoot the same shit over and over and in similar ways.

The difference between so many Strobists and yours truly is that my livelihood depends on me shooting much of this stuff in that same boring and repetitive manner the anonymous commenter mentions. My clients don't pay me to try out new approaches to pretty girl shooting. They have specific uses for the images I capture and they want them captured in a specific way. My clients continue to hire me for the CONSISTENCY of my work. They're not interested in gambling or risking their money when they hire me. They know they're going to get what they're paying for, namely, competent, glamour and tease images of pretty girls in sexy poses with and without wardrobe and shot in a dependably CONSISTENT style... boring as that style might be to some.

You think shooting in a consistent style isn't a paramount reason so many working fashion and commercial shooters are hired, over and over, by the same clients? Photographers, please. As a rule, clients want to know what they're going to get before they hire a specific photographer. Clients don't like surprises unless those surprises are exceptional and exceed their expectations and, frankly, most photographers aren't willing to risk an ongoing client relationship to experiment on someone else's dime. You want to try out something new? Try it out on your own dime. And then, take the results to your clients and see if they like it. If they do, great. If not, they still know you can shoot in that old, dependable style that they're counting on you to deliver... plus sometimes , as a bonus, with a few of those tricky secrets of the pros [sic] tossed in.

BTW, if a client were to suddenly materialize and hire me to shoot some B&W art nudes--however unlikely that might be--you watch how freaking fast my shit looks different, way different from what you see here. And guess what else? My B&W art nudes won't look like experiments. They'll look like I've been shooting that stuff for years. How so? Because I'm confident I could take all the crap I know about lighting and composition and exposure and adapt it to other genres. That's called experience.

If I were a hobbyist and/or new to photography (like so many Strobists are) I would be trying out all kinds of different approaches to my work. I would develop different styles. My work wouldn't look consistently familiar and, once I knew I could competently shoot using newly learned techniques, I'd be moving on to other new techniques. But I'm not a hobbyist. And I'm not new to photography. I make my entire living with cameras in my hands. And I'd like to keep doing so.

Let's say I were a guy working on the auto assembly line in Detroit. (Perhaps there are a few Strobists who make their livings that way?) I don't think it would go over real well if I walked into work one day and decided to make a different car than the one my employer was paying me to make. If I did so, I probably wouldn't last long on that job. Besides its obvious statement, does this analogy also hint at me saying I'm more a mechanic than anything else? I suppose it does. My clients don't pay me to create art or to deliver images that don't look like the images they expect. They pay me to create a specific make and model of pretty girl, if that makes sense.

Does all this mean I'm content making repetitive and boring pictures of pretty naked women? Nope. And I'm fairly sure I've written about that as well. I will mention that I'm always looking to expand my photographic horizons. I'm always looking for new and different opportunities. And I'm convinced I'll reach some of those other goals. But, in the meantime, I need to keep food on the table and a roof over my head so, as banal as it all might be, I'll continue making repetitive, boring pictures of sexy women until I can earn my keep making some other sorts of pictures, hopefully, of the non-boring variety.

The boring and repetitive pretty girl image at the top is Kat from a year or so ago.

*UPDATE* Wow! A few hours after blogging this post and, suddenly, I have a Google Content Warning on the site! Over three years of posting my babble along with my pics and now Google has a warning posted which, BTW, takes someone filing a complaint for that to happen. Religious and other moral zealots, a.k.a. asswipes! Just what the world needs LESS of.