The Big Lie: Why ‘Slowing Down’ Won’t Save Your Photography
Author’s Note
This article below is pure parody. It is a lighthearted but pointed rant aimed straight at the so-called wisdom parroted by popular photography gurus and their echo chambers that never shut up. If you get offended, maybe you are in the wrong place, or maybe this is exactly what you needed to read today.
Let’s get this clear. If you think you need to slow down to make better photographs, you are basically admitting you have been half-assing it all along or just plain doing it wrong. Slowing down is not some noble creative lifestyle. It is a correction. It is training wheels for people who keep falling over while pretending they are riding a motorcycle.
Scroll through any photography channel on YouTube and you will hear it within the first two minutes. Someone says, “I love my Leica M6 because it makes me slow down and really think.” Hop into any Film vs Digital thread on Reddit and you will find someone bragging, “Shooting Portra 400 forces me to slow down and actually see the world.” Read an old Ken Rockwell piece and you will find him praising his beloved Nikon FM2 for forcing him to slow down like he is channeling Cartier-Bresson’s ghost at the bus stop.
Watch any Peter McKinnon video and you get “intentional shooting” on repeat. Jump into Fujifilm forums and you will see it every other post. “I bought the X100V because those vintage dials make me slow down and appreciate every frame.” Click on street photography videos by Willem Verbeeck or Matt Day or any twenty-something with a nice sweater and you will hear the same sermon. “Manual focus is amazing because it makes me slow down and really be present.”
It is all the same broken record. Some stranger in a DPReview comment thread says, “Film changed my life because it slows me down and connects me to the scene.” Meanwhile they are standing on a sidewalk shooting a stop sign for ten minutes like it is a Buddhist koan.
Here is my problem with this. I shoot street. If I slow down, I lose the moment forever. The good stuff flickers alive for half a second and if you are standing there fiddling with your retro dial to feel profound, that scene has already disappeared into someone else’s rear-view mirror. Slowing down is the enemy when your subject moves at the speed of real life.
Sure, if you are setting up a long exposure of the ocean at sunrise, slowing down makes sense. You check your tripod, your filter, your settings. You wait for the waves to settle just right so the foam blurs into a dreamy mist. Or if you are hauling around an eight by ten view camera, slowing down is baked into the whole circus. Nobody rushes when the film costs twenty bucks a shot.
But most of these slow down evangelists are not shooting giant negatives in Yosemite. They are wandering around their neighborhood with a Pentax and a fresh roll of Kodak pretending they found enlightenment. They think turning a metal focus ring makes them spiritual masters of light.
The truth is simple. Slowing down covers sloppy habits. If you have to slow down just to remember to meter properly or set your shutter speed, you were not paying attention in the first place. You do not get a medal for learning how to drive straight after you have already crashed into the mailbox fifty times.
So yes, slow down if your hands are too shaky or you keep blowing out highlights because you cannot read a histogram. Slow down if your horizon lines keep tilting like you are standing on a sinking boat. Slow down if you pace back and forth hoping an idea will land in your lap instead of actually watching the world happen in front of you.
But do not fool yourself. The best shots do not wait for you. The magic flicks on for a heartbeat then it is gone. If your legacy is that slowing down rescued your work, maybe you never really worked at all.
If you need mindfulness, do yoga. If you want to make pictures that breathe, stay awake, stay quick, and grab the scene before it dissolves forever.
Now, time for the silly stuff.
The Supposedly Fast Lives of Thousands of Photographers No One Ever Notices, Right?
I mean, whoa. I truly had no idea that after waking up, dragging yourself half-dead to the bathroom, brushing your teeth with yesterday’s regrets, and fumbling through the morning routine, you were already setting land-speed records. Apparently, photographers have transformed the mundane act of getting ready for work into an Olympic qualifier that leaves every other poor bastard’s daily ritual in the dust.
And then there’s rush hour. You know, that daily rite where the rest of the world crawls in bumper-to-bumper gridlock, inching along like cattle through an abattoir of car horns and stale coffee breath. But not these photographers. No sir. Somehow they hurtle down the freeway at three or four times the average speed, overtaking reality itself to reach their holy temple of work before the rest of humanity even spills its first coffee on the dashboard. They must be doing 180 on side streets, drifting around school buses and shopping carts with the grace of stunt drivers who moonlight as adrenaline junkies.
And when they finally arrive, it’s never a calm pull into a parking spot. No gentle turn of the wheel, no polite wave at the crossing guard. Instead, they come screeching into the lot like an ICE raid at a taco stand, tires squealing, doors flung open mid-roll, launching themselves out of the windows because who has time for door handles when the day is slipping away by the millisecond?
Picture the scene: a photographer vaults over the hood, another barrel-rolls across a row of parked cars, hitting the ground running in a dead sprint through the lot. They hurdle the security checkpoint like trained Olympians, vault over the metal detectors, and squeeze into a special elevator that rockets them up twenty floors in the time it takes a normal soul to blink. They blast out of the lift, breathless, dodging coworkers, and skid into their cubicles just as fifteen other photographers collapse into their swivel chairs, equally sweaty and wild-eyed from the same morning circus.
And then the real spectacle begins. Fingers blur across keyboards at speeds never meant for mortal wrists. They pound out captions, client emails, and passive-aggressive group messages so fast that replacement keyboards are stacked in supply closets like ammunition in a bunker. Letters pop off and bounce across cubicle walls like shrapnel. IT support can’t keep up, ordering crates of fresh keys to feed the daily massacre.
Then comes the first break. A smoke break should be a moment of calm, a time to lean against the loading dock and pretend the world stands still. Not for these maniacs. They stand two abreast, double-fisting cigarettes like human chimneys, power-dragging through four in a row, exhaling a fog so thick it sets off the fire alarms.
Lunchtime is no different. The cafeteria turns into a feeding frenzy worthy of a nature documentary. Forget waiting in line like civilized folk. These photographers swarm the buffet like a school of piranhas on a cow carcass. They grab trays by the armful, slap raw patties onto the grill with bare hands, sear them for half a second, then slap them between bread and call it medium rare to keep up appearances. There’s no chewing, just quick gulps, lumps sliding down throats while they eye the exits like sprinters at the starting blocks. Seconds later, they scatter to the bathrooms, rinse the grease from their chins, and charge back to their desks for round two with the keyboards that never stood a chance.
So much speed. So much glorious, ridiculous speed. The secret lives of photographers would make NASCAR drivers weep with envy.
And yet the day is not done. The commute home looms like the final lap at Monaco. Back through the lobby they dash, hurdling potted plants and pensioners, vaulting over children with balloon animals, sprinting for the parking garage as if their lives depend on beating the sun. They dive into cars, engines roar to life, tires squeal again, and out they go. On any given evening you can catch a line of these camera-wielding speed demons blowing past speed limits, leaving local cops gasping for air in their wake. Patrol cars give chase, sometimes drones hover overhead like mechanical vultures, and traffic cameras flash in futile protest as tickets pile up faster than the shutter on a sports photographer’s Nikon.
Who would have known? The photographers who lecture us about slowing down are apparently the fastest people alive. And to think, all that frantic motion just to sit there and pretend they’ve unlocked the secret of patience with a roll of expired film and a smug grin for Instagram.
No wonder so many photographers cling to the idea of slowing down when they pick up a camera. The rest of their lives tear through the day like bats out of hell.
