I get the impression that decision making has gone out of fashion. Photography is all about making decisions. So if it’s a dying thought process then that’s a problem.

The digital world gives us unlimited options. What we want to see, read, believe, engage with and accept, all available at the ends of our fingertips. The choices are endless but also confusing. Ideas and facts conflict and undermine each other. Confusion and indecision are the inevitable results with anxiety and insecurity close behind.

The digital camera allows us to keep making images as long as our finger remains on the shutter button creating a stream of often ill-considered random images. Such disrespect for the moment of image capture inevitably leads to hours of editing and post-production to find and cure the magical moments that may or may not exist. In effect decision making that has been put off to some time in the future. Procrastination at its best and worst.

The most dispiriting request any photographer can hear from a client and sadly the most often heard is the soul destroying “give me lots of choice”. The idea clearly voiced that the client sees you as no more than a photographic buffet provider from which they will snack when they return to their office along with their line managers and the true decision makers, inevitably those who hold the purse strings. Insecurity and anxiety prevents them from trusting the photographer or themselves to make a decision in the moment.

The analogue world (and I don’t just mean photography) required decisions to be made. There could be no fear of failure when materials used resulted in costs being incurred and results had to be lived with whatever the outcome. Imperfections were accepted and praised as evidence of the human hand being involved in the production process. But that was then and this is now.

All photography begins with the need for a decision to be made. What to photograph. Then how, when, where and most importantly why?

However, in a world in which we are bombarded with information such questions can seem overwhelming and are therefore avoided. The process of decision making provides two options, the ‘safe’ and the ‘ambitious’. In photography the former encourages the repetition of a perceived successful outcome and boring photographs. The latter a confidence and desire to take risks and embrace creativity rather than a technical formula. Images created through this process will invariably fail more often than they succeed but that is the reality of the creative process and it needs to be embraced.

The digital world gives us the option to take the easy road rather than the one less travelled. AI technology even offers to do the work for us through post-production and in camera ‘hacks’. It gives us options and spoon feeds us ‘successful’ outcomes it feels we will like. In this case the decision making process is being stolen from us. We remain in our comfort bubble but that is not a good place to be.

So, where does that leave the 21st Century photographer? Is the answer to return or cling on to an analogue world? I don’t think so. I think we have to adapt. We have to be aware of our weaknesses and address them. We have to decide to take control of our decision making process and in doing so question our relationship with photography. Why do we make photographs and what do we hope to gain from making them?

As always I have no answers for you. You will have to find your own, as only you can decide what you think. I know that to respond to anything I have suggested here you will have to make decisions, but isn’t that an exciting position to be in? The decisive moment in photography is not just when you press the shutter but every moment you own a camera. Don’t be scared of that enjoy it.

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

Scott’s book  Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.

©Grant Scott 2025

Image: ©denisismagilov – Adobe Stock – 261609041