Don’t Put Your Penis Near the TV Remote
Some time ago, I saw a Fetlife post that stuck with me. It was a joke about those guys who post pictures of their dicks next to TV remotes, apparently imagining somebody might find such imagery compelling. The post was funny and any sane person would have chuckled at the joke and moved on. I am not a sane person. And a big part of my artistic project involves thinking deeply about smutty nonsense. So I ended up writing two thousand words on the subject of TV remotes in dick pics. Why? Because when you peel back the layers, there’s actually something really profound at the core of this conversion. The reason nobody likes to see a TV remote in a dick pic is because it violates a fundamental—but often unstated—principle of photography. Let’s dive in.
Why a Snapshot isn’t a Photograph
It’s not just about TV remotes, of course. If you’ve seen enough dick pics then you’ve probably seen a dick pic with a dirty toilet in the background. Or perhaps you’ve seen a dick pic with an unfinished bowl of Doritos on the coffee table and Family Guy reruns playing on the TV. To have studied dick pics seriously is to have been bombarded by all manner of unflattering bullshit lurking in the background.
It’s tempting to dunk on the guys sharing these grotesque dick pics. In fairness, however, the very same issue also plagues many of the SFW pictures people of all genders dump on their dating profiles and social media. Lots of amateur photography is flawed from a technical perspective and, honestly, that’s fine; the purpose of most photography is to document a moment in time, not to create art. However, the otherwise forgivable flaws of the median photograph are thrown into sharp relief when it’s the kind of image that’s clearly meant to impress, such as dick pics and dating profile avatars. This is why these unflattering dick pics stand out as particularly embarrassing in a way that your girlfriend’s drunken nightclub selfie does not, in spite of the fact that neither image is great art.
The technical issue afflicting both the unflattering dick pic and the drunken selfie is fundamentally the same: bad backgrounds. Distracting backgrounds are the bane of amateur photography, the most glaring and commonplace flaw you’ll find anywhere images are shared online. A huge part of what separates good photos from mediocre ones comes down to controlling the backgrounds. This is a fundamental skill professional photographers learn but, strangely, it’s one that is rarely taught in a holistic manner. And that’s a shame, because it is the very essence of photography.
Simplify Your Backgrounds
In studio, professional photographers place their subjects in front of simple, non-distracting backdrops. On location, those same photographers usually favour lens/aperture choices which blur everything behind the subject. In both cases, the logic is the same: it’s about directing the viewer’s attention. Good photographers know how to guide the viewer’s eyes across an image using lighting, colour, contrast, depth of field, etc. But this all starts with having a decent background. If you put the subject in front of something simple and non-distracting, the viewer will have no choice but to focus their attention on what matters.
You don’t need any fancy gear to try this out yourself, by the way. Here’s an experiment: try taking the same kind of selfies and dick pics you’re taking right now, but just spend a few extra moments to put your body in front of a blank wall or a dark curtain or bedsheet. You might be surprised how big a difference this makes in the final result.
Do Not Simplify Your Backgrounds
If you want to show off your dick or your face with a nice, flattering photo, you are almost always going want a simple, clean, non-distracting backgrounds. The exception to this rule is when the background communicates something interesting about the subject.
It’s easy to understand this with the help of a hypothetical. Let’s suppose you’re trying to impress a prospective romantic partner on a dating app. What kind of pictures do you need? Well, first off you’ll need a nice headshot to use as your avatar. Next, you want a full length or 3/4 to show off your body. Both of these should have simple backgrounds, because the point is to give an honest and flattering representation of what you look like. Once that’s done, however, you do actually want to start including some photos with prominent background elements. The key is knowing which backgrounds are good and which are bad…
If you’re a musician then you should definitely have pictures of yourself performing on stage, even if they’re technically flawed. If you’re an experienced rope top, you should have pictures with ropes. If you’re well-travelled, you should have pictures in exotic locations. When I say “avoid messy backgrounds,” I don’t mean pictures like those. Those kinds of pictures are invaluable. They show that you are an interesting person. They are also useful conversation starters; your prospective connection can say “hey! cool guitar! what kind of music do you play?” and then, boom, you’re having an actual conversation instead of just saying “how R U?” back and forth like boring losers.
I’m not trying to offer dating advice here. I’m using this dating hypothetical to give a relatable scenario which illustrates how a professional photographer thinks about environmental portraiture (which is really just a pretentious way of saying “a picture of a person with prominent background elements”). In the same way that you want your dating profile pics to work as a conversation starter, a great environmental portrait should conjure some questions in the mind of the viewer. Backgrounds and props are great when they’re used to tell a story, communicate an interest, add some helpful context, or flatter the subject. You don’t need to avoid busy backgrounds entirely. You just want to avoid having anything irrelevant in your photograph.
What Photography Is
We’re circling something very fundamental about visual media. To understand what I mean, let’s contrast photography with painting. Both are visual art forms, of course. And they can even look quite similar. But the logic of how images are constructed is exactly opposite. A painter starts with a blank canvas and, bit by bit, she adds. The painter constructs, as Susan Sontag put it. Painters build up an image by placing more and more paint until every square inch of canvas has been covered, sometimes many times over.
The process of photography is the opposite. Photography is subtractive. Think about it this way: The easiest painting to create is something very simple—a blank canvas. But the easiest photo to create is a big mess. Try it out yourself! Take out your smartphone, close your eyes, and take a picture of whatever is directly in front of you. In most cases, you’ll end up with a cluttered image, an image with a bunch of irrelevant objects all over the place, an image that is confusing and unfocused. In short: you have a photograph that isn’t about anything. You have a photograph with no subject.
The task of the photographer is to choose the subject and isolate it from all distractions. Perhaps you zoom in on one part of the scene. Perhaps you light the scene so that subject is bright while the surroundings are in shadow. Perhaps you use lens/aperture choice to ensure that the subject is in focus, while the scenery is blurry. Perhaps you choose a background that is a complementary colour to the subject, so the subject stands out. Perhaps you place your subject in front of white seamless, so the viewer’s eyes have nothing latch on to except the subject. However you accomplish this goal, the guiding logic has been the same: remove everything from the image until, at last, whatever remains serves some artistic purpose. Good photography discloses, in Sontag’s framing.
This, fundamentally, is why nobody wants to see a picture of your dick next to a TV remote. As I said above, props and meaningful backgrounds are great and you should definitely put them in your pictures, dick or otherwise. But the TV remote isn’t a really prop, right? It’s just the thing that happened to be next to your dick when it got hard… Perhaps an image like that could be intended as a visual gag. Or perhaps the owner of the dick wanted to convey a sense of its size. If so, great, it’s photographically reasonable to follow that impulse. But I do think you can find better props for your dick pic than a TV remote. I believe in you, anonymous internet dick owner. I just want you to believe in yourself.
On Dick Pics
Dick pics have a very bad reputation. And I think sometimes people wrongly attribute that bad reputation to the fact that it’s a picture of a dick. I’d like to challenge this notion. I think it’s perfectly possible to take a beautiful picture of a dick that somebody would delight in receiving. But that’s going to require some basic photography skills, and also some common sense etiquette.
A lot of the dick pic’s bad reputation comes from assholes who send them without consent. Don’t do that! You need consent before you send a dick pic. Also, probably don’t make a dick pic your avatar on Fetlife; people will think you’re a creepy loser.
Okay, now let’s suppose you’ve cleared that very low bar and you’re not being a creep with your dick pics. You might still reject my premise that you could be taking beautiful dick pics. Perhaps you don’t think you have a beautiful dick. Or perhaps you don’t think dicks in general can look beautiful. I think you’re wrong on both counts. First off, I suspect your prospective partners care way less about the size and shape of your dick than you think they do. Your dick is probably fine just the way it is. I believe in the beauty of your dick, internet stranger. And, moreover, I strongly reject the claim that it’s impossible to take a compelling dick pic. I just think this doesn’t happen very often because most dick owners are putting zero effort into their dick pics and, frankly, it shows.
Story time: Years ago a friend gifted me a mummified muskrat carcass she’d found on her property. I incorporated that carcass into a series of classically styled Vanitas still life images. When I shared those photographs online, the overwhelming response was “that’s beautiful.” One of those images ended up on a magazine cover; that cover was recently nominated for an award. My point is this: it’s absolutely possible to make a photograph of a mummified muskrat carcass that most viewers will consider beautiful. Do you really think making a beautiful photograph of your dick is going to be more challenging than that?
Dick pics are great, actually. Or at least they could be. This is my fundamental claim, I guess. Dick pics can be great if they’re shared in a respectful and consensual manner and created in a way that respects the fundamental principles of photography. I’m planning a project along exactly these lines—stay tuned. If there’s a call to action here, I suppose it’s that we should all make less dick snapshots and more dick photographs. And let’s remember that dick photographs, like all photographs, are an exercise in subtraction.