Make Beautiful Photos for Yourself

Make photos which you peeceive as beautiful for yourself. I feel we should make photos for ourselves, that when we look at our own photos, we feel happiness and joy!

This is my rationale:

  1. We all have a different definition of “beauty”. And that’s okay! We should seek to pursue our own definition of beauty, rather than superimposing our vision of beauty onto others.
  2. It’s impossible to make photos that please 100% of people out there. But it’s possible to make photos that please yourself! Therefore it makes sense to make photos to please yourself; not others.
  3. We get more joy from looking at our own photos, than the joy we get from others who admire our photos.

Discover your own taste for yourself

Therefore my conclusion is this:

  1. Figure out what kind of photos you consider beauty. Discover your own taste and what you decide is “beautiful” in terms of your own personal philosophy of aesthetics.
  2. Master your own aesthetics. This means continue to pursue to make photos you consider beautiful, and don’t compromise your own photographic and artistic vision.
  3. Recognize everyone has their own definition of beauty of aesthetics for themselves. And acknowledge that’s okay and a good thing! For example you might love high contrast black and whites (I love to crush the blacks, aka super high contrast), whereas others hate it. That’s okay! Some of us like vanilla ice cream, others like chocolate, and some of us like mint ice cream. Some of us like matcha green tea ice cream, some of us coconut ice cream, and some of us (gasp) don’t even like ice cream!

To conclude friend, what do you consider a beautiful photograph? What’s your aesthetic taste?

Answer this question for yourself, and don’t stop shooting!

Here are some of my own photos that I find beautiful:

ERIC