The Worst Clichés

So I've got a question for you. What would you say are the worst subject-matter clichés in photography? I'm trying to come up with a list.

I'll start [my openers were the first three —Ed.]:

1. Sunsets
2. Flowers
3. Cats
4. Homeless people [Martin]
5. Selfies [Jim Simmons]
6. A pier and a lake [Rodolfo Canet]
7. Streaky headlights from long exposures [Andrew]
8. "The meal I am about to eat" [John Hagen]
9. Waterfalls [Mattias]
10. Long exposures of moving water, whether they be waves, rivers or waterfalls [Jeremy T]
11. Rainbows [Carl Siracusa]
12. The whole country of Iceland [Chris Y.]
13. Slot canyons [Yr. Hmbl. Ed. again]
14. Windmills [David B]
15. Geometric architectural element [Nicholas Condon]
16. Old barns [Dave Jenkins, who sold 29,000 copies of his book of pictures of old barns!]
17. "Witty" juxtapositions of posters/billboards and unsuspecting passers-by [Richard Tugwell]
18. Reflections [David Dyer-Bennet]
19. Reflections in mirrored sunglasses [Richard Tugwell]
20. Dogs [Jim Wright] [Actually Jim, there are no cliché dog pictures. They are all unique, full of personality, distinctive, and charmingly appealing! Well.... —Ed.]
21. Lighthouses [Richard Nugent]
22. Rowboats, kayaks or canoes tied up together or in a row [me again]
23. Ruins [kalli]
24. Nude women in high heels and low earrings [Eric Kellerman] [Helmut Newton called that a career —Ed.]
25. Random snapshots of random passersby on city streets [ronin]
26. Old peoples' hands [Dave Morris]
27. Shots looking up or down long, winding staircases that form a spiral [Jimmy Renfro]
28. Old skeletal cars or tractors in fields [Jimmy Renfro]
29. Abandoned old boats high and dry on beaches [Jimmy Renfro]
30. Peeling paint and shredded billboards [Peter Nilsson]
31. Abandoned urban interiors [Martin]
32. Lone trees on hills [Ruby]
33. Pictures of self and camera in (bathroom) mirror [Frank]
34. Photos made from a canoe with the bow of the canoe projecting into the bottom of the picture [James Bullard]
35. Half-filled wine glasses in front of some out-of-focus scenery [Judith Wallerius]
36. Classic cars and airplanes [Mikey]

Can you name others?

Be the first
Clichés are interesting to me. To begin with, they change with time and circumstance. Sometimes old ones can embody fashions that, in retrospect, seem bizarre.

The easiest way to make a good photograph of a cliché is to be the first person to think of it.

Of course cliché photos can always be good, too. And that's an interesting thing about them. Here's an example: a million tourists have made joke pictures of a friend holding the Washington Monument in his hand or pushing back against the Leaning Tower of Pisa, by conflating the foreground and background as if near and distant objects were the same distance from the camera. Old; been done; cliché. Yet here is an inventive use of that very trick that is a fine and interesting photograph and nothing I've ever seen before. (Or maybe I just like bokeh. I dislike the photographer's title, though, which smacks you with the fish of the obvious.)

Know that territory
I do think that the more clichéd the subject, the more obligation we have to be familiar with prior photos of the subject...the better to more intelligently place our own photos in the context of the cliché. Whether ironically or non-ironically. (I'm thinking of that famous picture of numerous tourists all posing by the Tower of Pisa in a variety of "hold up the tower" poses, but I can't find it. I thought it was by Burk Uzzle, but I guess not. [It was Martin Parr, 1990. Thanks to Andrew. —Ed.])

If you can stand a little crudity (might not be work / school safe, so watch it), here's an example of a photo by someone who knows the cliché and is playing off it. It's not a good photo either, but it's funnier.

I digress
But I'm getting away from the question. Back to your nominations for the list....

Mike

This discussion continues here.

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jimmy Renfro: "'Pea pod' babies—any newborn dressed and posed in a way that mimics Anne Geddes. Converse sneakers in grass. Shots looking up or down long, winding staircases that form a spiral. Birds eating something alive. Birds flying, especially hummingbirds. Birds just sitting there staring. Butterflies with extreme bokeh. Dragonflies. Abandoned old boats high and dry on beaches. Mountains. Lightning. Produce. Old skeletal cars or tractors in fields. People riding bicycles. Any wedding photo with a warm, hazy, film-aping retro filter. Old bearded Hindu men that give the impression of being gurus. Anything to do with a Holi festival. That robot restaurant in Shinjuku. Rural barns and bridges. (I'll stop now, before I smash my camera and take up drinking again.)"

Torgeir Frøystein: "In Norway we have a kitsch cliché: 'Moose in sunset.' It is so well known it is used to name clichés. Like in: 'That is so Moose in sunset.' Which of course leads to the clichés of landscape photography, that makes it so hard to be a good landscape photographer."

Chuck Albertson: "Tourists snapping selfies in front of the red phone booths on Parliament Square. Even in the dead of winter, every time I turn the corner coming out of the Westminster tube station, I have to wade through a mob of them."

Richard: "If we keep this up, there won't be anything to take photos of."

Mike R: "I'll borrow one I've heard from a couple of watercolor painters: ARAT—'Another Rock, Another Tree.'"

David Dyer-Bennet: "Reflections. Mist/fog over water. Buildings rising out of fog. But you know, I haven't found my interest in any of these heavily-shot subjects to have been worn out."

Ken_T: "My, we're a cynical lot! Might as well hang up the cameras and become Internet trolls. I photograph for two reasons: 1) to make a living, in which case I aim to please the customer, and 2) for personal satisfaction, in which I aim to please myself. In neither case do I care whether anyone else considers my photographs clichéd."

Mike replies: You've made an easy mistake—we're not talking about your photographs. Indeed we're not talking about anybody's photographs. We're talking about clichéd subjects. More thoughts to come on how it relates—stay tuned.

richardplondon: "That genre that I had a longstanding ambition to explore...until I discovered it to be really difficult (grin)."

Paul: "Asking for a list is a cliché."

Comments

[Crank Caller]

Nondescript overweight blonde women with their hair in a ponytail wearing sunglasses and leggings trying to look glamorous. Actually, I'm just tired of seeing that at all.

[Speed]

Bee and flower.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=bee+and+flower&qpvt=bee+and+flower&qpvt=bee+and+flower&FORM=IGRE

I spent an hour one day getting a decent picture of a bee flying near a flower. It was an exercise of the "If I can't take a technically difficult picture of a bee flying near a flower, I'm not much of a photographer" type.

Among aviation photographers, aircraft landing at Philipsburg/St. Maarten airport are an important subset of "airplane, landing" clichés.
http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?placesearch=Philipsburg+%2F+St.+Maarten+-+Princess+Juliana+%28SXM+%2F+TNCM%29&distinct_entry=true&page=1&page_limit=15&sid=eb255ac51c5a327b265bfaaa66793575&sort_order=views+desc&thumbnails=

[William Furniss]

Off-kilter, weird, ironic, photographic artist, junk.

[William Furniss]

Work that deals with change, memory, loss, and the worst, a sense of place

[Michael Bearman]

Back-lit sheep.

[Dennis Buss]

Seagull on a pier.

[Dave New]

Antelope Canyon. Yes, I know it is a slot canyon, but it deserves a cliche category all its own.

You can't get through an art fair without seeing at least one or more Antelope Canyon shots.

Funny thing is, they are still best-sellers. Even Alain Briot of http://beautiful-landscape.com admits it is still one of his favorite locations.

[Mark L. Power]

Had I a day or two to do nothing I am sure I could come up with a meaningful and original image of each of the 36 cliches with names attached that all would recognize. I was once tempted to forbid people from bringing in pictures of trees to class. Of course while i was mulling over this fascist possibility someone brought in a picture of a tree I had to have...

[Chris Livsey]

What happened to star burst filters?
Due a cliche comeback perhaps.

[IanC]

We need to think radically. I think the new frontier is hyper-cliche photography: I see a cat, random passers-by, a nude in high heels and a broken-down tractor all posed together on an Icelandic beach. At sunset.

[Bryan Hansel]

Some guy on the street smoking.

[Ed]

Photos of random objects in someone's living room using a prime lens wide open so hardly any of the photo is in focus - just to show you how 'awesome' the bokeh is! Flickr is full of these pictures.

[Veronica]

Making a heart shape with your hands. Just about as f*****g irritating as selfies!

Portraits, har, har! Almost every photographer since photography began has been snapping them!

[ronin]

Monument Valley, with extra points for some impending meterological event (eg, approaching storm, big puffy clouds, sunset, sunrise...)

[ronin]

Rodeo shots with slow shutter speeds such that the picaresque subjects are kind of streaky.

[ronin]

Natural stone arches in this or that national park. Props if you use a wide angle lens and depict star trails in a nighttime exposure.

[ronin]

A foreground silhouette of any subject you like, as long as you can cut and paste it onto a spectacularly saturated background sunset.

[dan]

Wrinkled face in paifully sharp b&w

[Greg]

List grows bigger and bigger, it's good to see.
Here's my take on cliches
http://ditchitall.com/blog/photography/photography-should-cliches-be-avoided/