What are the rules of photography, actually? Rule of thirds. Golden hour. Catch light in the eyes. Somewhere along the way, most of us learned there was a ‘correct’ way to take a photo, and an incorrect one.
Maybe it’s arrogance. Maybe it’s just blind stupidity. But I’ve never been able to tell myself something is impossible until I’ve actually tried it and failed. Until that moment, as far as I’m concerned, the thing is completely possible. People have told me otherwise plenty of times. “There’s no way,” they say. “Photography doesn’t work like that.”
But the telling never quite lands. I go looking for a way in anyway, picturing myself doing the thing, clear as a photograph already taken. Just the picturing seems to widen the odds.
Ok, so what would it feel like to not even know the rules of photography, and just work out your own way of seeing instead?
This is the whole reason we don’t teach rules at Loop Art & Photo Space. Not because rules are wrong. They come from somewhere real. But rules are also a kind of ceiling. Once you know what a “correct” photo looks like, it gets harder to take one that doesn’t. You start shooting toward an answer instead of toward your own eye. A whole world of images you might have made quietly disappears, because you now know they’re the wrong ones.
How would it feel to make an image that sits closer to your actual vision, rules aside?
Our classes, beginner right through to the more advanced work, are built around giving you the tools to bring that vision to life. Not the vision you’re ‘supposed’ to have. Yours. The one already in you somewhere, half formed, waiting for a bit of technical footing so it can show up in a print or a frame instead of staying stuck in your head.
If you’ve gone looking for a photography class and felt that quiet pressure to fit a mould, the good light, the flattering pose, the acceptable subject, this might not be that.
Because, what I’m trying to say is; if you don’t know what’s impossible, or what the rules of photography are supposed to be, you’ve got a far greater chance of making your own. And your own personal style along with it.
Come find your version of photography.