One of the more fascinating aspects of photography is how our acceptable norms differ from the norms and accepted practices we live under during day-to-day life. The most prominent example of this is generalizing or stereotyping. Outside of photography circles, generalizing is offensive—and with good reason, because it’s so often targeted at race, gender, belief systems, and so on. It’s just not a good idea to assume that a stereotype actually
applies across a broad group of people. Individuals are all different.
But in photography, a lot of what we do consists of generalizing. In fact, when done carefully and conscientiously, these generalizations very often work to our advantage. If you’re not sure what I mean, let me give you an example...
