How will photography help your SMV and social ascendance journey? That kind of artistic voyeurism is beta af and guys shouldn’t care so much about looks, right?


TL;DR:

Your life is perceived to the public in super-high quality images that were curated to look like they pop off the screen as opposed to just snapshotting moments. Just like girls do, surprise surprise. The public perceives you as living a much better life than you are, you look way better in pictures (more muscular sometimes), the clean look exudes a wealthier vibe for some reason, the parties you’re at look more glamorous, the girls you’re with are shot in perfect lighting and look way better than they do irl, and the exclusivity of choosing which girls you’re gonna put up gives you leverage on them. You can show your personality easily, while keeping the details of your life very vague, darker shots create mystery especially when they’re clean and sleek. Pickup is easier, Tinder is easier, girls chase you for your photos of themselves, and they get wet for your huge followings on social media (which you will eventually get if your photos are consistently good, more on that later). And all it takes is an extra daemon process at the back of your brain and an extra camera you keep in your backpack or car.


Edit: This is for people who have a tendency for photography, it's not a one size fits all tip for gaming women. If you cannot share photos you like without caring about likes/followers and playing the girls' game, get out of here.

Photography’s diminishing law of returns graph is very tall and narrow. If you have a little intuition, you can learn most of the theory in a few hours, make your amateur mistakes in a couple of weeks, and become relatively close to someone who’s done it for years. Their consistency will be much higher, their shots will always be better than yours, but the general public will rarely be able to tell the difference.

1) The “eye”:

Basically being able to compose a photo in the most aesthetic and interesting way that tells a story or invokes emotion. First thing’s first, you gotta get one of those. Some will already have it intuitively, I did, you probably do, but don’t skip this step yet, you need inspiration and you need practice identifying why your intuition likes it and how to reproduce that. For inspiration, follow a dozen photographers on Instagram from your city. This shows you incredible photos of the scenes you see every day but missed how they can be turned into photos. To find them, choose a location on Instagram and half the Top Posts will usually be big time photographers.

Choose the ones that fit your style. As we all know, masculinity errs on the darker side of the spectrum, so go with contrasty clean mysterious interesting black-blue tones, symmetry shots, night shots. Now that that’s said, I’ll contradict myself by saying shoot whatever the fuck you want, even though super colorful screams beta, and cliches like sunsets and landscapes scream boring, there are cityscape sunsets and adventurous landscapes worth taking (@mrbenbrown), so if you think it looks cool, don’t constrict yourself to a style, just take the shot. Then branch out your city and get a little of everything, follow a couple of accounts that exclusively do portraits of people(@kolja.e.photographie), a couple exclusively architecture/symmetry, a couple astrophotography (@seanparkerphotography).

After learning the basics of exposure (10 min video), go through their galleries, identify why you like the photo and how they planned taking it, what edits you think they did to make the feel this way. Steal their ideas, don’t use their same composition from the same angle, but steal the fact that this spot is worth shooting and make it your own. Or just imitate their same shot, who gives a fuck.

2) Gear:

Photography snobs love to rant about how expensive gear doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t, you can occasionally take great shots with shitty cameras if you’re good enough…but good gear helps a shitload in saving your shitty mistakes, and making good photos great. Craigslist a used DSLR, someone who’s selling multiple lenses and accessories within the 500-1000 range, this should give you gear that is worth at least 1000-2000 range in retail. Lenses make more of a difference, invest in them over camera bodies. If you’re rich enough to dish out a couple thousand go for a full-frame camera with a high end lens. I personally suggest a prime lens, basically a fixed level of zoom, it makes you move around and think more, taking better shots. Zoom lenses are more versatile but are usually less sharp and heavier, suit yourself.

3) Social media attitude:

THIS is where you stand out from the rest. Don’t call yourself a photographer, don’t brag, don’t use jargon unnecessarily, please don’t watermark, be subtle and casual that you’re “playing around with a new camera” or you’re “trying it out” while taking stellar photos. Don’t write philosophical quotes as captions. If you caption, make it a short creative title if the story/context you’re trying to convey isn’t apparent enough. People will perceive you as other-worldly Instagrammer as opposed to amateur photographer. One of the harder bits in this guide is to protect yourself from external validation/criticism. People tell you good job enough, you get dependent on it and ache when it fades. People criticize you enough, you won’t trust your vision as much. So never look at likes, never let people influence what you decide is a good shot worth taking or posting. They’ll catch on, people who like your vision will eventually find you and follow you.

5) Pickup:

It’s as simple as finding a girl near you and pointing your camera at her. If you follow a couple of the tricks I mention below, you’ll probably take a great picture of her, then you can approach her, show her the pics, take a couple more shots while she gets shy, and talk. It blurs the line between direct and indirect approaching. Bullshit away, you liked the light on her, you liked how she looked, light negs like you have a nice face (but not a nice body), criticize her fashion choices that could’ve made the shot better and you know what to do from there. If you think you’ll look like a creep, you will IF you don’t approach her. Sometimes I can’t be bothered and just wanna take the shot, but if you’re after the girl, back up the bold move of pointing a camera by going saying hi.

Girl: Fat guy taking a picture of me and shying away, what a creep.

Girl: Fit guy noticing me and casually taking a photo, omg he’s looking back in my eyes, omg he’s coming over.

5) Tinder:

Don’t write your full name on your Instagram and you can link it to Tinder to give your profile a special mysterious look to it, where you’ll be careful to include a girl in your shots every 6 photos to add an extra tinge of abundance and show your 5 Tinder photos aren’t a rarity in the slightest. Moreover, if you interest her enough to check your Instagram, she’ll see the followers you have and if they’re more than hers, game over. It makes a difference, trust me on this.

6) Little tricks:

I’ll mention a few tricks that can help jumpstart your photos in the beginning. Some of the following is subjective.

a) I suggest a 50mm lens as your first lens, something like this or 85mm (more zoom) if you’ll be shooting from a farther distance. 50’s a very useful level of zoom that I rarely find too narrow or too wide, and these lenses gives you consistent “bokeh” or blowing out the background out of focus with its wide aperture, usually making portraits look better. This is a very easy way to make all your portraits pop out your screen, useful in pickup.

b) Shoot in manual mode (takes only a week to get used to it), shoot in RAW format and import to Lightroom, basic edit there, transfer to your phone through Dropbox and check if VSCO filters make it even better, post to Instagram. This is the most efficient workflow I’ve gone with so far. Manual mode gives you control over what the photo is (if you want to show movement or freeze the moment, if you want to blur or show the background, how bright or dark the photo is). RAW format preserves a very wide dynamic range, meaning it captures a lot of light information so you can make the photo you took way darker or way brighter than you could if you were shooting in JPEG format. The downside to that is, it needs special software like Lightroom which is simple and easily pirated. Lightroom itself has some tricks that make most photos better, but I’m trying to keep this basic.

c) Avoid harsh sunlight (noon), find softer light for better photos (around sunset). Taking a shirtless pic? Overhead lighting is your best friend. Find it and get your dick ready.

d) Shoot yourself from below, closer to the floor to look bigger. A deadlift PR from /u/GayLubeOil on an iPhone in energy-saving blue light will get the girls sweating, sure, but if that was shot in fascinating quality from the floor showing a huge beast towering above, or that shirtless selfie was instead a clap of chalk…vaginal waterfalls.

e) If in a casual setting, look away from the camera to show that low-fat jawline in a candid setting. Darken the shadows, up the contrast, and end with a slight pop of clarity to emphasize.

f) You can learn to pose people, but mostly I just wait for people to act natural then start shooting. They get used to it, that they’ll see the end of my lens every few weeks and they trust it’ll probably be good.

g) Skip the tripod, too expensive and too big to drag around, you’re not a pro. Buy a Joby Gorillapod ($100), compact, very versatile you can plant it on anything and is just as good as tripods for time lapses and night shots when you need slow shutter speeds to capture more light.

h) The secret to followers is consistency, both in quality and quantity. Take it easy for a while, gather 15 great shots ready to go, and start releasing a photo every other day or so. Provided you’re an active high-SMV male, taking your camera with you to activities should land you at least 2-3 great shots a day. Eventually with that rate, you gather enough that you can stop for weeks before running out of photos.

i) You think pros go check out a spot, say “got it.” and proceed to take their next poster shot in mins? They simply run all the angles and all the perspectives possible, then patiently go through the 300 photos they shot to find their true winner. You can do the same, they’re merely more experienced at ruling out angles and being more prepared to capture the moment before it happens.

j) This is the most valuable tip to me, never heard it anywhere and developed it myself. If you stare at the same pic for more than a minute, your eyes get conditioned and you can’t recognize the color subtleties anymore. So after editing a photo or applying a filter…before you post, look away from the screen for 5 seconds then quickly look at your phone. Only then will you notice if it looks flat, too overcooked, too dark, or too bright.

Please feel free to ask any questions and I can elaborate on technicalities if you’re having trouble researching.

Edit: To clarify, this isn't a "Get Followers on IG to Show Great Shots of Yourself" guide. This is an "If you get into photography and love it, it'll subtly showcase your high-SMV activities to the public in fascinating quality, provided you never label yourself a photographer or care about likes/followers" guide.