Take My Photography to the Next Level?

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I often think some of the most uncreative minds work in the marketing departments of photography-related businesses, whether it's gear or software. Why? Because they so often use the same bullshit lines to hawk their wares.

Case in point: "Take Your Photography to the Next Level."

First off, how is my photography, you know, my personal skill at shooting pictures, taken to some next level if that next level is nothing more than a piece of gear or software?  If I buy into that bullshit, it isn't my photography that's being taken to the next level, it's merely some next level of equipment ownership  with said equipment producing pictures that some might think are next-level worthy.  But then, if a thousand other photographers also purchase that same equipment or software, are they now at the same "next level" as me?

I wouldn't be ranting about this oh-so-common advertising line if it weren't so... so freaking common!  I see it everywhere. It's like photography magazines who put "Secrets of the Pros Revealed" on the front cover of their rags. I've seen that a gazillion times as well. There are no secrets of the pros. There's only lesser known techniques that fewer people are aware of but that everyone can find out about whether or not they buy the magazine that is supposedly revealing those well-guarded secrets or not.

I don't have any replacement marketing lines for these common lines but then I'm not a copywriter in some marketing department of a photographic gear or software company. I'll admit these same, often-seen lines must work to some degree or so many wouldn't be using them over and over. But there are people whose jobs it is to come up with this stuff and, frankly, I can't believe some companies are paying them to regurgitate the same tired words as their competitors also regularly spew. Where do I get a job like that?  Call it "bullshit envy" but I want someone to pay me a regular paycheck to simply copy what others are doing and saying without the slightest deviation.

Anyway, that's my mini-rant for the day. I think I'll go back to thinking of ways to actually take my photography to the next level and/or to help others do so...  i.e., to an actual and real next level.

The photo at the top is one I snapped over a decade ago and just came across the other day. It was taken not long after my conversion from film to digital and during my very early days of learning to use Photoshop. Apparently, I was somewhat into producing app-like faux-film-grain on digital images in spite of just recently going from film to digital or how many previous levels my photography was at during that time period.