No more postcard photos, OK? (Or if you must, then DO something new with them.)

Here’s the thing. I admire great photography. No question about it.

But I love Photoshop more.

And something I really, really love about Photoshop: you can take photos that normally amount to little (or nothing), and turn them into something unexpected, even meaningful.

You can turn them into ART.

With the right training, Photoshop can make you feel like an artist. And rightfully so. With Photoshop and some imagination, an endless world of possibilities opens to you.

As a photographer, however, after the whiz-bang coolness of your gear wears off, you begin to realize the limits of what you can hope to accomplish. Soon enough you start to notice how daunting it is trying to capture something that hasn’t already been done. (And probably done by a slew of better photographers than you.)

So maybe you turn to foreign travel to spice up your photography. Maybe you turn to off-camera flash and hire your first model.

Then you realize that Flickr is already filled with about 8 million photos exactly like the ones you were trying to make.

No matter what you do to jazz things up, after a while you run up against the same wall. And it can get a little depressing when you realize that very little of what you are shooting measures up to what you can find in half the magazines in the rack at the book store or over in the post card display next to the cash register.

And every day you can be sure that there are hundreds of new DLSR users out there reading the same articles on how to capture the perfect dew-drop-on-the-flower-petal photo we’ve all taken. Or watching the same video on capturing an HDR panorama of the mountains. Or striving to get that same perfect sun flare we’ve already seen a hundred times already.

But of course, for all that, I do believe that photography itself can be pushed further. With the right creative touch, and enough work, it’s possible to still astonish us with an extraordinary photo.

And for all of those quite-nice but still-less-than-extraordinary captures, we have our secret weapon we can bring to the fight. With Photoshop on our side, we don’t have to settle for yet another photo of a butterfly perched atop a daisy. We can DO something original with it.

We can push it … FURTHER.

Although really, the best way to push further isn’t to simply jazz up a conventional photo and make it artsy with Photoshop. The best way is to find something better to work with to begin with.

It doesn’t need to be a mind-blowing photograph either. But if you can find something you care about, something that excites you, then you are probably on the right track. Having a story to tell, a mystery to relate, a cause to champion — an image or an idea that means something to you — can inspire you to push further than you otherwise might.

So the moral of the story here is this: Don’t settle for another post card photograph. If the photo has already been done … why do it again? Instead, find something else. Or if you must make the photo, DO something new and unexpected with it at least.

But ideally, try to find something new. Or better: something that MATTERS (or at least something that strikes you in some powerful way). Capture that. Then perhaps find some other images to pair up with it, a set of images you could work into a composition.

Then bring it all together for us in a new way.

Remember: the one unforgivable crime is to bore your audience.

So astonish us.

You have the magic. Go weave us a spell we have never seen.

And leave the butterfly and daisies to someone else.

– Sebastian