1. Use Leica : Serious photogs only use Leitz optics. Anything else is not real photography. All the great photogs used Leica - HCB, etc.
2. Use f/2 or faster : Anything shot with smaller apertures is not art.
3. Use Tri-x : (I know, hornet's nest) : Use Tri-X to take grainy pics with that butt-ugly Tri-X "Character" (aka grain) instead of using better film like HP5+ or APX-400. Oh, all the "great" photogs always use Tri-X.
4. Always print full frame like HCB. Any cropping is cheating. Though you have that ugly coke can in the corner, you can't crop it.
5. Blurred photos are ART damn it
It's a style of expression, just like the impressionists who freaked with blurred unclear junk they passed off as art. (Yeah, I hate the impressionist paintings - give me the biting clarity of Ansel Adams any day). I remember seeing a pic by Henri Cartier Bresson - it's a guy with a big violin on a cycle and there's bad camera shake. I can't imagine how he could actually publish it. I would have thrown it out.
6. Have an important subject (or part of the photo) out of focus or shaking or blurred : There's a pic in Galen Rowell's Mountain Light where a plant in the bottom corner is out of focus and shaking in the wind. When I looked at the pic, that is the FIRST thing that caught my attention ("yuck, now why did he do that?"). IMHO that distracts the viewer and gives unwanted attention to a messed up part of the image.
7. Use 6x6 or even 4x5 and use soft focus lenses or diffusers : I hear over and over again about the improvement in sharpness and quality of a larger format. Well I guess it only increases when they use a diffuser. How can it be otherwise?
8. Use a camera without a viewfinder or TTL meter. Like the old Leicas. I have heard many many people claim that it "forces" them to compose, estimate distance, estimate the metering and shoot. It's a skill and an art to produce true journalist pics (so they say). Now why can't these guys simply use something like a Ricoh GR-1V or even a quiet SLR with AF? I've got many perfectly exposed/focused pics - shot from the waist with my EOS. Or is it a masochist / sadist thing?
