The Cost of Being Nice

A photographer’s confession: how people-pleasing holds back the art.

There’s something I need to admit—and it’s not easy. When I photograph an event for free, I don’t take risks. But here’s the catch: when I get paid, I often still don’t. I make the same quiet compromises. I reach for the image that will comfort, not challenge. I try to be kind, useful, invisible. I serve. And it breaks something in me.

I don’t mean I do a worse job. Technically, it’s fine. People are happy. They thank me. But I leave with a familiar ache: I didn’t go far enough. I didn’t dare enough. I stayed on safe ground.

Because I wanted to be liked. And because I wanted to be useful.

And maybe that’s the most dangerous thing for any artist—not rejection, but approval. The kind that keeps you neat and pleasant, and miles away from the work that’s actually inside you.

So this isn’t about pricing. It’s about courage. Or the absence of it.

I want to be brave. I want to take the stranger frame, the one that might be too quiet, or too blurry, or too honest.

I want to stop being nice. I want to be real.