Your favorite visual cliché

Expensive watch on wrist with exotic sports car wheel and badge in background..... usually accompanied by by fanboy gushing, and response posts of same watch brand in another fancy car. Makes me laugh at the flexing.
Common on most watch forums.....though I'm guilty of hanging my beater watch off my motorbike handlebar....and I enjoy the watch and camera posts here.
 
Never noticed this thread before. A lot of fun. And like many, makes me want to take the key out of the camera cupboard and leave it on the shelf. I miss Juan Valdenboro. He was right to struggle in getting the gist of this.

Instagram generates strong cliche themes - silhouetted figure in generous, tiny, negative space. Primary colours, main subject centered. Etc etc. It gets to the point where you’ll be so overloaded you’ll be wearily disparaging of some photos which in another context you’d say were excellent.

Looking at medium format on Flickr the rate of fine shots in black and white with Rolleiflex seems to be so much higher than with a Hasseblad: a sharp perfect fence and a clump of trees flanking some indifferent building, very sharp, seems only to serve the purpose of confirming, that yeah, I actually do have a Hasselblad.

Same with macro of insects and flowers. Either the technical achievement itself offers some revelation, eg a focus stacked image, or verging on nano detail, or a clever composition extracted from nature, or it’s banal. And the technical achievement has to be near perfect. I’ve tried this. A bee hovering near a cherry blossom, not quite perfectly focused. Why? I’ve deleted more of these types of shot than any other. With flowers I’m beginning to see that I want to get some mystery or emotion, or even motion itself into it. Mapplethorpe’s flowers are special. Most others are not.

Every photograph of something which only shows what that looked like photographed is a contender for this thread here, and the risk of showing one probably goes up if you’ve got a Leica or a Hasselblad. I remember photo.net there was a regular bunch ooing and aghing about each other‘s Leica shots. I just didn’t get it. Of course I hadn’t yet been schooled here by so many fine photographers. RFF is unique I reckon. The Gallery and weekly Gallery picks and Random Gallery picks reveal so much gold.

And I would claim that at least more than 50% of my bicycle shots held some extra factor justifying me not deleting them. I never photographed a chained up one, I swear. Or maybe one, with a bicycle, not of a bicycle, with the Hexar. It was still a good shot.

Sorry to spoil the Feng Shui of the thread.
 
Shots with prominent bokeh.

Wrought iron railings.

Another tree. (A bit unfair, it’s hard for a tree not to be special)
 
My favourite clichés if done well but often not:

Rain water or any body of water reflecting the subject matter in an impressionistic way. The cherry on top is when the photo is displayed upside down. This always gets me.

A photo of a person sitting around nothing special but that person is in an exotic land wearing something exotic looking exotic sort of a breathing version of a cemetery angel. On the subject…oh please no more fking shots of cemetery cherubs.

A sleeping cat on top of boxes in a mom and pop store. Extra points if it was shot in India or at least Alabama.
 
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The longer the thread goes, the more it´s getting obvious that anything & everything has been shot to cliché status.
Steveh had a shot here years ago of London Bridge, in fog, the Gehrkin visible, a Victorian lamp, a black London cab, a Routemaster double decker bus. And maybe a Bobby. The combination of these transcended cliche to instant genius. There is always hope. With the very next shot.
 
cliché ???​
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Fujifilm X-T2 camera
Voigtländer Nokton 23mm f1.2 (X-mount) lens
February 2024 - Yokohama, Japan​
 
1. Sunsets
2. Close-ups of insects, flowers, birds
3. Street shots of homeless/indigent people
4. Reflections in mirrors or puddles of water
5. Eiffel Tower
6. Leaning Tower of Pisa
7. Waterfalls
8. Times Square day or night
9. Ocean waves
10. Lunar and solar eclipses
11. N.Y.C. skyline
12. Random street shots of people talking on cellphones
13. Close-ups of plated food
14. People as back-lit silhouettes
15. Narrow winding alley/streets
.............................................................................there are many more, but if I continue, there will be nothing left for me to shoot.
 
My favorite visual cliché
W/NW Pictures of people with cellphones :)
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Fujifilm X-T2 camera
Voigtländer Nokton 23mm f1.2 (X-mount) lens
February 2024 - Yokohama, Japan​
 
My favorite visual cliché
W/NW Pictures of people with cellphones​
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Sony A7III camera
Sigma 90mm f2.8 lens
February 2024 - Yokohama, Japan​
 
Flatiron building. It’s also a strange attractant for Leicas. There are at least 5 or 6 Leicas in Madison Square park at any time of day.
 
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