Directing

Directing is one of over a hundred jobs that photographers must do in order to end up with a decent image. I was going to make a list of all of them (oh, how I love to make lists) but the other things, I got to thinking, weren't all that important.

Sure, there's focusing, framing, exposure settings, and stuff like that, but none of that is relevant if the director is AWOL or merely phones it in. Without directing, the image is empty. Vacant. Worthless. Worthless images might as well be out of focus, poorly framed, and underexposed, because none of that matters. A business plan, advertising, sales, promotions, reputation, developing a style, set-building, stylist, or the hundred other things a photographer needs to do.

Even if the planned photograph has no people in it, directing is critical. SOMEONE needs to have a vision, and some kind of a plan for getting to that vision, before a photographic image can ever expect to have purpose, therefore function, therefore worth, therefore commercial or artistic value.

A truckload of the latest lenses will not make up for one's lack of directing ability.