5 ways to impress your fellow photographer

Monday 13 October 2025, 15:30 by Nando Harmsen | 3,212 views | 6 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

How do you impress your fellow photographer? There are several ways. You can even turn a mediocre photo into a masterpiece. If you do it right. Here are five ways you can use. Can you think of any more?

Photographers are very focused on equipment and settings. Not all of them, I don't want to tar everyone with the same brush, but more than you might like. You can impress people with equipment and settings.

Do you recognise yourself in these tips? Don't worry, it's not meant personally. But it is based on reality. As they say in films: any resemblance to people or events in reality is purely coincidental.

1. Overwhelm people with equipment and settings

It used to be done in magazines, and digital photography took it to uncontrolled extremes. Listing the camera, lens, focal length, settings and everything else that was used.

Just making an impression: Sony A1 with Laowa FFII 10mm f/2,8 C&D Dreamer with autofocus, manual exposure at -1 EV, f/5,6, ISO100 and 1/1000sec, matrix metering, handheld, exposed for the lightest parts and corrected in Lightroom Classic.
It gives the impression that you know what you are talking about and that you know what you are doing. If you really want to stand out, mention all the equipment you own in the caption of your forum post. Or on your website.

2. Make up a vague story

A photo tells more than a thousand words. That is an undeniable truth. It also gives you the opportunity to turn a mediocre photo into a masterpiece.

Late in the evening, as night is approaching, a small bird sits high in the tree. Its call sounds like an echo in the falling darkness. It is a little owl, for which the night is its domain. Ready to spread its wings and hunt. I see it among the leaves, an inconspicuous silhouette. It feels as if another time is beginning, the nightlife. I have to go home, looking for warmth and light, making way for the little owl as it prepares for its nocturnal life.
Add what you were thinking, and how you felt. Make up a vague story to mask the mediocrity. Do it well, and your photo could even be worthy of the final round of a photography competition.

3. Show off your technique

Let people know what technique you used. How many exposures you made and how you combined them. Which equipment you used, and how much effort it took.

This photo was created from 25 vertical exposures with a 200mm lens from a tripod using a nodal setup. The overlap is 30%, which allowed me to create a panorama 25,000 pixels wide. Click on the photo to see it better, not really... this is an example of a caption like the ones I often see.
Make a panorama from dozens of images with a telephoto lens to get a photo you could also have taken with a wide-angle lens. Make a bracketing sequence of twenty photos that you could also have made with two.

The most important thing of all: mention it with your photo.

4. The no-editing excuse

Editing is the equivalent of developing. In the past, you developed your photos, these days you edit them. Or not, because you can also claim that your photo is unedited.

Straight out of camera, no editing. This is how it really was, not manipulated...
Showing an unedited photo means that you don't need any editing. That you have such good control over the technique that you can get it right in the camera. That will amaze people.

5. Follow the trend

Editing a photo into a finished result is much like developing a photo in the analogue era. The technology has advanced in leaps and bounds. You are keeping up with it closely.

Generated with AI, and enlarged with an AI canvas. (Not really, but this is how it would be done these days)
Show that you use the technology and have mastered it. Use all the software tricks, such as AI. Add things, remove things, make it completely different. Show that you are the one who keeps up.

Was it about the photo? Or not?

Technique is important. Without a camera, it is difficult to take a photo. Without software, it is difficult to edit one. Without technology, we would not be where we are now.

Remember that this is not about impressing your fellow photographer. It is about creating beautiful images. Technique is important, but completely secondary.

Finally, I want to mention one important thing: it's just a joke, don't take any of this seriously, do whatever you like and whatever feels right to you. Those are actually four things, but as I said: don't take it seriously.

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