Photography has potential to be both the most equalizing and polarizing art form imaginable. All you really need to get started is a camera — any will do — and an ability to understand what looks good. On the other hand, there are people who swear that you need 50 lenses, a full flash setup and at least a half-dozen SLR bodies before you could even begin to take it seriously as a hobby. Yet somehow, for all the infinite variety that photography should offer us, we see the same things over and over. The same photos, the same tricks, the same clichéd, hackneyed shots. These are the worst offenders.

 Heart Book Lens

I have no idea what started this trend, which was exceptionally cool for about 14 seconds, and then became such a horrible level of cliché that I can hardly breath. You take a ring or lens, put it in-between the pages of a book, and shine a light around until you make a pretty little heart. The example shot above isn’t too bad, at least it’s not the wedding ring/bible combo that so many people tend to gravitate towards. Even so, it’s been done a million times by a million people, and it’s not romantic any more. It’s not cute. It doesn’t show some wonderful inner message. It’s trite, boring, and does nothing to prove you have an ounce of creativity.