I was watching (something online, can’t remember) recently and I saw a very famous photographer saying something like:  “Oh, I’m not a technical photographer.” while palming off their $20,000 Phase One to one of their many assistants.

And every time I hear a famous photographer I admire proclaim that they are “not technical”, a little part of my aperture dies.

I’m calling bull-shutter on that.

Because here’s the thing — you don’t accidentally become great at photography. You don’t consistently capture magic without knowing exactly how your camera works, even if you don’t talk about it like an engineer reading a spec sheet in binary.

The Myth of the “Intuitive” Photographer

Look, I get it. It sounds romantic to say you just “feel” the shot. That the camera melts away, and the world aligns, and the decisive moment floats into your frame like a swan in slow motion. Beautiful story. But let’s not pretend that you “felt” your way to perfect 1/125 at f/2.8 in backlight.

You knew.

Even if it was muscle memory. Even if you never said the words “reciprocal rule” out loud. Somewhere along the line, you sat down and learned — either through trial and error or by reading your camera manual like it was an ancient scroll.

It actually does a disservice to the new photographers to pretend that the technical stuff doesn’t matter. Because, spoiler alert: it does.

Shutter Speed and Aperture: The Yin and Yang of Photography

If photography were cooking, shutter speed and aperture would be salt and fire. Get them wrong, and your photo is either burnt or bland.

• Shutter speed controls time. It’s how long your camera blinks. Blink too slow, and motion smears like butter. Blink too fast, and you freeze time like an ice cube. (ok, I’m hitting the end of my culinary analogy)

• Aperture controls depth. A wide aperture (like f/1.4) gives you dreamy blur and background separation — perfect for portraits. A small aperture (like f/16) keeps everything in focus — perfect for landscapes, or your cousin’s entire wedding party.

That’s it. Simple. Beautiful. Powerful. And absolutely necessary to understand if you want to shoot with intention.

But I Just Want to Shoot in Auto!

Sure. You can. No one’s judging. (Okay, maybe a little.) But here’s the thing:

Shooting in auto is like me writing this blog using ChatGPT.
Occasionally, you’ll get something lovely. But you’d have no idea how you get there, and you don’t know how to replicate it exactly a second time.

When you understand the basics — when you know what your camera’s doing and why — you stop hoping for good photos and start making them.

You go from “I don’t know why that shot was good” to “I know exactly how I lit this, framed it, and nailed it at 1/200 f/2.8 ISO 400 with a kiss of off-camera flash.”

And that’s when the real fun starts.

You Don’t Need to Be an Engineer

Being “technical” doesn’t mean loving MFT charts or pixel-peeping. It means caring enough about your craft to learn what makes your tools work.

It’s like driving a car. You don’t need to rebuild the transmission, but you should know how to change gears and hit the brakes. Same goes for cameras.  Learn how to set your shutter speed so your photos don’t look like they were taken during an earthquake.

Final Thoughts (a.k.a. Nerdy is Sexy)

The truth? All great photographers are technical. Even the ones who claim they’re not. Especially them. They’ve just internalized it. Like a musician who “just plays” — trust me, they spent years learning scales first.

So if you’re just starting out: don’t skip the basics. Learn how shutter speed, aperture, and ISO work. Learn how they dance with light, motion, and mood. Learn how to speak the language of your camera.

Because once you do? That’s when the magic really happens.

Now go out and shoot. And for heaven’s sake, shutter responsibly.