Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: dreed on June 03, 2011, 09:39:53 pm
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Folks at MIT have been doing research into whether or not it is possible to algorithmically determine if a photograph is memorable:
What makes an image memorable? (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/memorable-images-0524.html)
From the web page:
Landscapes? They may be beautiful, but they are, in most cases, utterly forgettable.
“Pleasantness and memorability are not the same,” says MIT graduate student Phillip Isola.
The actual research paper can be found at http://cvcl.mit.edu/papers/IsolaXiaoTorralbaOliva-PredictingImageMemory-CVPR2011.pdf (http://cvcl.mit.edu/papers/IsolaXiaoTorralbaOliva-PredictingImageMemory-CVPR2011.pdf)
Anyone want to put bets on how long it will be before cameras come with internal algorithms to "rank" photos (using the research of this paper) as part of the photo taking process?
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Folks at MIT have been doing research into whether or not it is possible to algorithmically determine if a photograph is memorable:
What makes an image memorable? (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/memorable-images-0524.html)
From the web page:
Landscapes? They may be beautiful, but they are, in most cases, utterly forgettable.
“Pleasantness and memorability are not the same,” says MIT graduate student Phillip Isola.
The actual research paper can be found at http://cvcl.mit.edu/papers/IsolaXiaoTorralbaOliva-PredictingImageMemory-CVPR2011.pdf (http://cvcl.mit.edu/papers/IsolaXiaoTorralbaOliva-PredictingImageMemory-CVPR2011.pdf)
Anyone want to put bets on how long it will be before cameras come with internal algorithms to "rank" photos (using the research of this paper) as part of the photo taking process?
I had no idea that Russ was doing research at M.I.T.! ;)
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I had no idea that Russ was doing research at M.I.T.! ;)
Just shows how right he's been all along!
Rob C
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"Anyone want to put bets on how long it will be before cameras come with internal algorithms to "rank" photos (using the research of this paper) as part of the photo taking process?"
not with correlation coefficients of around 0.5 or less i hope.
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MIT could have saved a lot of money on research if they'd just asked me. If they'd been interested in the question fifty years ago they could have asked Walker Evans. He'd have told them, as he told his student: "It's a beautiful sunset. So what?"
As far as an algorithm to determine if a photograph is memorable, having done 30 years of software engineering I'm rolling on the floor laughing. These guys need to read Weizenbaum's Computer Power and Human Reason.
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Most people shooting landscapes do not do it to make them memorable, they shoot it because they are compelled to express what they feel about the world and humanity, and landscapes are their chosen medium. Just like mountain climbers climb mountains "because they are there". So whether landscapes are memorable or not carries very little weight in my case, even assuming the study is right.
Now, the study. It reminds me of those countless studies with "revolutionary" discoveries of the type "if you eat too much, your chance of getting obese doubles or triples". Another aspect of this study, to use analogy from the computing world, would be GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). That is, study conclusions are heavily influenced by the assumptions made and tools used in designing it.
For instance, if you use a generic postcard photo, as the one used in the article, of a mountain against blue sky, it is been seen by everyone millions of times before and is as "memorable" as if you turned the lights off or locked the door leaving the house. Compare that with human pictures in the study: each one represents a very unique or unexpected situation. So, generic vs. unique... hmmm... which one will I remember better? I see a Nobel prize in the making here for answering such a deep question.
Even the authors admit it: "...natural landscapes... can be memorable if they feature an unexpected element..." No shit, Sherlock!
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Even the authors admit it: "...natural landscapes... can be memorable if they feature an unexpected element..."
Exactly, Slobodan. That's why landscapes that include the hand of man often are memorable, while landscapes that include only what Wordsworth called rocks, and stones, and trees almost never are.
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One of my best sellers is a picture of an abandoned rock house awash in sunset colors. The glowing drama of the piece is nice, but what really sells it is the fact that every teenager who grew up in this area got drunk there every other Saturday night. Makes it very memorable indeed. I would say all my best sellers connect to peoples memories and recognition of place in similar ways. I am tempted to say "iconic" images are the most memorable.
But forget the merely pretty pictures, only another photographer could like those. We photographers are seriously in error when we use the praise of other photographers as a litmus test of an image's worth.
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Russ, we obviously have a different notion of what an "unexpected element" might be. For me it could be light, color, shade, juxtaposition of elements, etc., everything but the hand of man. OK, scratch that.. there could be occasionally a hand of man.
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Weizenbaum's Computer Power and Human Reason.
One of the few memorable books I have read in my life.
Oh - and yes --- its good to shoot beautiful but forgettable images - if people remember the image they wouldn't need to buy a print.
Make beautiful forgettable images and become rich ... !
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Russ, we obviously have a different notion of what an "unexpected element" might be. For me it could be light, color, shade, juxtaposition of elements, etc., everything but the hand of man. OK, scratch that.. there could be occasionally a hand of man.
+!0.
Eric
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What makes an image memorable has nothing to do with its visual components by themselves. Memorable pictures are ones that stimulate pre-existing emotional programming within the viewer's mind. That is why cliches are highly memorable, some level of receptive programming is already in place in the grey matter, what an advantage for the cliche artist!
It's about lighting up memory circuits already present in the beholder's brain. Successful photographers do not stagger around on mountaintops with their walkabout lenses, but rather plumb the depths of the human psyche for clues that will lead them efficiently to the Perfect Memorable Shot.
Bottom line, those MIT guys are trying to measure memorability just because it's something sufficiently well defined to be measured. Would appreciate it if they would up the bets and give us a map to greatness or at least saleability, that would interest me a lot more.
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Russ, we obviously have a different notion of what an "unexpected element" might be. For me it could be light, color, shade, juxtaposition of elements, etc., everything but the hand of man. OK, scratch that.. there could be occasionally a hand of man.
Slobodan, Check Turner and Constable and you'll see what I mean. In some cases you come upon the hand of man unexpectedly.
It doesn't take an algorithm to know that people are a lot more interested in man's relationship to nature than in nature itself. Let's face it, until fairly recently we regarded nature as demonic and ugly. It wasn't until Rousseau that that attitude began to change, and our current attitude toward nature is learned, not inborn.
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Let's face it, until fairly recently we regarded nature as demonic and ugly.
What culture would that be? Granted, some aspects of nature have been considered "demonic," namely storms, earthquakes, floods and other calamities, but I find such a sweeping generalization questionable at best. Even more so in the case of ugliness, although I can see a case being built if you're using that in the brutish sense of the word.
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Feppe, I don't have time to dig through my books at the moment, but I did a quick check on the web. Here's one reference: http://1000petals.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/human-attitude-towards-nature-throughout-history-andreev/
If you'd like more, I'll try to find time to do some more digging.
I'm surprised you found this strange. It's a well-known fact.
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What culture would that be? Granted, some aspects of nature have been considered "demonic," namely storms, earthquakes, floods and other calamities, but I find such a sweeping generalization questionable at best. Even more so in the case of ugliness, although I can see a case being built if you're using that in the brutish sense of the word.
I'd have to agree with you. I've spent a lot of time in "nature", most of it in foreign countries. I've almost always been in the company of a client or student so I've been able to observe their comments regarding certain aspects of nature, and I've never.. not even once.. heard it described as "demonic" or "ugly", though I can certainly think of some natural disasters I've witnessed which would qualify.
Nature is capable of of invoking all emotions which is why landscapes are so meaningful to those whose frame of reference invokes those specific emotions.
Take the sea for instance, it goes from calm and azure blue beautiful with a myriad of life submerged just below on a coral reef.. to angry, ugly, and almost homicidal as a cyclone appears out of nowhere and starts destroying/killing everything in it's path.
We must remember, 'most' of those who view our work aren't academics, art directors, or even fellow photographers. They are normal every day people who could care less if an image has CA, noise, or the other issues we worry ove. During "ugly" times of nature they tend to stay indoors and isolate themselves. They most often experience nature when it's at its best.. and their observations will be anything but "ugly" and "demonic."
Nature is the source of our roots. Nature is the beginning, and the end.
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Feppe, I'll have to admit that "ugly" probably wasn't the right word, but "threatening" certainly is one of the right ones, along with "demonic."
Steve, You and I agree that nature can be beautiful, but our fairly recent ancestors didn't. The idea that nature is beautiful is something we learned from poets and painters, and, as I said, the lesson began around the time of Rousseau. As Casey said, "You could look it up."
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Feppe, I'll have to admit that "ugly" probably wasn't the right word, but "threatening" certainly is one of the right ones, along with "demonic."
I'll take threatening, but the word I'm having problems is demonic. That would imply ill will or evil intent. Nature has been revered and even feared throughout the ages due to its unforgiving and often unexpected acts, but I'm having hard time pulling examples of entire societies considering nature evil and twisted.
I'm by no means expert on the subject given my reading on mythologies and philosophy is mostly on Finnish, Stoic, Chinese and Japanese, so I'd be interested in some scholarly research or books on it if there are any. The link you provided is to some random blog of uncited commentary from an HR manager - not even going to touch that one...
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Feppe, Yes, the link I turned up in a rush isn't scholarly by any means, but it's not wrong either.
Since we're into this discussion, which I never expected to have on LuLa since I thought that what I'm saying was common knowledge among people interested in fine art, I need to qualify my original statement. I'm talking about western art. The art of the Orient took on landscape long before European art did.
If I'm to find the references I want in my books, it's going to take a while. While we were in Florida a pipe broke in the house and flooded the room where I kept a lot of my reference books -- happily not my photography books. I'm trying to find replacements for the damaged lot.
But, in the meantime, as an indicator of what I'm saying, look for Western landscapes painted before the Romantic period. They exist, but they're allegorical, and dominated usually by religious or genre themes. The landscape is incidental to the allegory being presented as the subject of the painting. It wasn't until Rousseau more or less launched Romanticism that we began to see landscapes painted to show nature as a glorious thing. Both Turner and Constable were painting their landscapes during that period.
"Demonic" probably is too strong a word for periods as late as Baroque, but even then people didn't feel nature was benevolent. It was threatening and the threat was overcome mostly in religious practice. In some earlier periods I'd be willing to stick with "demonic," but before I can make that stick I need to find better references than what I have available at my fingertips.
In the meantime, here's a bit more focused discussion of Romanticism I found on the web: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html. If I get some time I'm going to do a more thorough search on the web because it'll to be a while before I have my books back.
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... until fairly recently we regarded nature as demonic and ugly. It wasn't until Rousseau that that attitude began to change, and our current attitude toward nature is learned, not inborn.
I rarely agree with Russ on matters of landscape, but this is an exception. We may quibble about his choice of words, whether it is indeed "demonic and ugly", but the essence is quite correct, at least when we are talking about Western civilization. And Russ' quoted source may lack the credibility of an established authority, but, once again, the essence was correct. Besides, I've been rarely much of a sucker for authority anyway.
But for those who rely on authority only, lets first establish it for my next quote. It comes from Sir Kenneth Clark, author of the Landscape into Art. To save you a trip to Google, here is the Wikipedia intro : "...a British author, museum director, broadcaster, and one of the best-known art historians of his generation. In 1969, he achieved an international popular presence as the writer, producer, and presenter of the BBC Television series, Civilisation.".
The religious aspect below can be used to understand the notion of "demonic". Underlining is mine:
... To some extent they were the outcome
of mediaeval Christian philosophy. If our earthly life is no more
than a brief and squalid interlude, then the surroundings in which
it is lived need not absorb our attention. If ideas are Godlike and
sensations debased, then our rendering of appearances must as far
as possible be symbolic, and nature, which we perceive through
our senses, becomes positively sinful. St. Anselm, writing at the
beginning of the twelfth century, maintained that things were
harmful in proportion to the number ofsenses which they delighted,
and therefore rated it dangerous to sit in a garden where there are
roses to satisfy the senses of sight and smell, and songs and stories to
please the ears. This, no doubt, expresses the strictest monastic view.
The average layman would not have thought it wrong to enjoy
nature ; he would simply have said that nature was not enjoyable.
The fields meant nothing but hard work (to-day agricultural labourers
are almost the only class of the community who are not enthusiastic
about natural beauty) ; the sea coast meant danger of storm and
piracy.
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Yes, but the 'Western' attitude has been a varied one. True, the advent of christianity had a negative effect (amongst many) on some attitudes towards the natural world, but the perceived 'ensoulment' of nature, concepts of genuis loci, sacred spaces, sacred landscapes & such like, points to a relationship with a land that was in may ways far more positive. That said, the natural world could be brutish & deadly too, and such things were also no doubt reflected in humanity's attitudes to nature & the land. I think our historical stance vis a vis landscapes has been far more nuanced than some might suggest.
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"We" in the original quote has turned into "Western," "Christian" and/or "European," which I believe actually means "western European" given the examples above. This is an all-too common view, unfortunately ignoring the views of vast majority of global population throughout history, majority of mythologies and religions, and perhaps most importantly, temporal aspect, given Christianity has been around for barely 2000 years. Making sweeping generalizations of how the world views nature based on a small subset of it is doomed to failure.
Granted, Christianity incorporated many of the beliefs (and much much more) from religions before it, thus representing the beliefs of a wider population than its numbers would suggest. Nevertheless, we would still ignore entire (sub) continents which have had no significant interaction with Christianism or its predecessors until 1400s or later.
I might be perceived as being pedantic, but cultural absolutism is a pet peeve of mine, of which I see hints of in the posts above. Regardless, claiming that "we" (as in humanity) have viewed nature as demonic and ugly until Enlightenment is a bold statement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_%28psychology%29), and as such statements go, they require extraordinary proof.
Very interesting subject, though, I might do some research on the non-Christian part when I'm back from vacation.
edit: quick googling turned out this (http://128.121.10.98/coe/pdfopener?smd=1&md=1&did=594643), segment "Images of Hunting and Farming in Prehistoric and Classical Art" is most relevant. The author describes art from those eras using words such as bucolic, naturalistic and mythical, and observe that nature was even relegated to "accessory status" in some Hellenistic art - hardly a demonic view of nature in the pre-Enlightenment cultures he mentions.
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... I might be perceived as being pedantic...
Ya think? ;)
Generalizations need context to be properly understood. Given that a vast majority of the forum members (at least the active ones) belongs to the Western civilization, it is not unreasonable to use "we". In that sense, I do not think any of us used "we" to mean "humanity".
Given further that the site has "landscape" in its name and the subject of the discussion is landscape, it is not unreasonable to assume we are talking about nature and landscape art.
By the same token, it is not unreasonable to understand the reference "until fairly recently" in Russ' original statement in the above context too, meaning "until 19th century", the century in which landscape art was established as an independent genre for the first time in history. To quote Kenneth Clark again (and to add some weight behind "my" bold statement): "...landscape painting... was the chief artistic creation of the nineteenth century..."
As a side note, I think that the concept of "quick qoogling", as a substitute for what scholars used to devote a lifetime to understand, and its impact on our understanding of the world, deserves at least an academic dissertation of its own.
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Steve, You and I agree that nature can be beautiful, but our fairly recent ancestors didn't. The idea that nature is beautiful is something we learned from poets and painters, and, as I said, the lesson began around the time of Rousseau. As Casey said, "You could look it up."
I can't help but think context is key in a discussion of this type. I tried to say this in a more subtle way but it didn't take.
Sure, if we go back and read an academic take during certain periods of history I'm sure you would be correct. Yet, the people who are viewing my photographs live in todays world and their experiences in reference to 'nature' are seen through a modern frame of reference. And like I said, I've never had a client or student refer to nature as ugly or demonic. So I don't think they're thinking this when looking at photographs from any period. Technology, modern conveniences, etc, isolate them to a degree which allows the way they interpret nature to be much different than that of our ancestors.
As photographers we can certainly learn through history and I value these threads and the subsequent discussions for the knowledge those like you share. But we must remember most of our audiences are modern and their frames of reference much different. Who can choose our audience, and they can choose us. I'd prefer they matched.
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I rarely agree with Russ on matters of landscape, but this is an exception
Slobodan, I suspect we agree more often than our exchanges would indicate, but if everybody agrees you can't have a good argument, and argument is the best teacher.
Thanks for pulling up a more convincing response than I was able to locate. I've been rushing around trying to heal the results of our flood and it drives me nuts when I can't lay my hands on a reference I want.
As a side note, I think that the concept of "quick qoogling", as a substitute for what scholars used to devote a lifetime to understand, and its impact on our understanding of the world, deserves at least an academic dissertation of its own.
See, there's another place where we agree completely.
I can't help but think context is key in a discussion of this type. I tried to say this in a more subtle way but it didn't take.
Sure, if we go back and read an academic take during certain periods of history I'm sure you would be correct. Yet, the people who are viewing my photographs live in todays world and their experiences in reference to 'nature' are seen through a modern frame of reference. And like I said, I've never had a client or student refer to nature as ugly or demonic. So I don't think they're thinking this when looking at photographs from any period. Technology, modern conveniences, etc, isolate them to a degree which allows the way they interpret nature to be much different than that of our ancestors.
As photographers we can certainly learn through history and I value these threads and the subsequent discussions for the knowledge those like you share. But we must remember most of our audiences are modern and their frames of reference much different. Who can choose our audience, and they can choose us. I'd prefer they matched.
Steve, I'm not sure what this has to do with the discussion underway. We've been talking about the history of art, and specifically landscape art, though, I'll admit, that's not the subject of the thread. Yes, since the Romantic period Westerners have enjoyed the beauty of landscape. (Though that doesn't make landscape photographs memorable.) Incidentally, when the Impressionists had their early shows polite Parisian society felt that pictures of landscape and genre scenes, some even painted outdoors (ugh!) instead of in a studio were gross and unseemly. How long ago was that? About 150 years. They were kids, but my granddads were around in those days.
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What makes an image memorable has nothing to do with its visual components by themselves. Memorable pictures are ones that stimulate pre-existing emotional programming within the viewer's mind. That is why cliches are highly memorable, some level of receptive programming is already in place in the grey matter, what an advantage for the cliche artist!
It's about lighting up memory circuits already present in the beholder's brain. Successful photographers do not stagger around on mountaintops with their walkabout lenses, but rather plumb the depths of the human psyche for clues that will lead them efficiently to the Perfect Memorable Shot.
Bottom line, those MIT guys are trying to measure memorability just because it's something sufficiently well defined to be measured. Would appreciate it if they would up the bets and give us a map to greatness or at least saleability, that would interest me a lot more.
Is a memorable picture more or less saleable than one that isn't?
As a random selection, one "memorable" picture that's landscape is the photograph of a lightning bolt hitting a tree outside someone's house. Pure chance. I can't find it quickly with google. If you've seen it, you know which picture I mean (they did a double-page spread of it once.) Another picture that sticks in my mind is the winter shot of Yosemite on NPS's website. Another more recent is of the tsunami from Japan as the wave moves through the San Francisco Bay Area. The latter isn't at all saleable, but perhaps because it is tied to a major event and is remarkable, the memory of it has stuck with me more than any other photo of the Japanese earthquake earlier this year. The Yosemite one, perhaps has a dollar value because it is tied to something famous.
Of all the photographs Michael has posted on his website, the one that I often remember most is that from when he was in Spain, testing out a camera and took a photograph of women's hats. That and one from Antartica of the huge jellyfish in the water with the penguin above it. Are either of those big money earners for Michael? You'd have to ask him but then those are just what's memorable to me. I'd be really interested if someone like Michael submitted a selection of well sold and non-well sold photo-prints to see how they measure under the algorithm being developed by MIT.
To reflect on comments from Alain Briot, in one of his earlier essays on selling photographs at the Grand Canyon, what enabled him to do well was the location of the prints being sold (in a/the hotel.) I'm pretty sure I recall him mentioning that he sold a lot of prints at the end of the day to folks that had been out walking, were tired, and wanted to take something home that reminded them of where they'd been. In his further comments on that topic, he mentioned it was 16 years from when he started out to when he took a photo that went on to be his best seller. If he's got a data set there (of photos across the 16 year period that he took trying to work out what people wanted) then putting that type of material in the hands of researchers such as those at MIT might enable them to come up with an algorithm that at least works out what makes a good welling Grand Canyon photograph.
It will be interesting to see if any photographers from the digital age get involved with researchers in providing data in the form of pictures and sales to enable research on "what makes a good selling photograph."
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Steve, I'm not sure what this has to do with the discussion underway. We've been talking about the history of art, and specifically landscape art, though, I'll admit, that's not the subject of the thread.
This is why I stated context is key. YOU were talking about the history or art, and so were a few others. But several of us were talking about "What Makes An Image Memorable" which is the topic of the thread, and we picked up snippets of your art history discussion and perhaps not recognizing the new 'art history' angle right off, responded. If you want to limit this discussion of what makes an image memorable to the area of art history.. then sure go ahead.. but please don't limit the rest of us. If you expect others to be open to your 'frame of reference" then try to be open to ours.
Perhaps your knowledge on the area would allow you to juxtapose a historical over a modern view which might benefit us all.
This following comment isn't talking about you specifically, but I've noticed a trend in this forum where some posters are adamant almost to the point of being hostile to sticking exactly to the original thread topic (as they see it) or even a topic as they interpret it, to the point where it makes others feel unwelcome to respond. Some even try to make those who think differently feel 'less' in some way for responding. In my personal opinion, only those who try and limit should feel less. The result is we have the same cliche of people participating in most of the threads with very little new blood. And nothing could prevent discovery or new learning more.
Something else to think about: Perhaps this is why so many (I'm tempted to use the words "vast majority") of modern viewers find so many landscapes boring and uninspiring. A fresh perspective based on fresh views 'might' result in wider audiences.
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Steve, Fair enough. And I apologize for expanding so far on what's really an offshoot of the original question. But if you look back you'll see that the offshoot began when we started talking about what makes landscape memorable as opposed to what makes an image memorable.
The answer to the original question is fairly obvious if you look at the history of photography. Landscape was fairly popular during the heyday of the Pictorialists, but even then pictures that included people were much more common than pure landscapes. Time is the great filter. It drops things that are less memorable and hangs on to things that are memorable. In fact, time's filter is pretty much the definition of "memorable." The photographic history books in my library contain a lot more pictures of people than of landscapes, and the pictures in those books are the ones that time has tested and retained, and therefore that can be called "memorable." Unless you're limiting memory to a very short time span, to call any contemporary photograph "memorable" is to make what my military contemporaries used to call a "wag."
As far as adamant posters are concerned, I'd much rather see someone argue his opinion than see him wussily back off when an alternative opinion pops up. You often learn things in the midst of a strong clash of opinion. On the other hand, not only are ad hominem attacks ugly, they tend to be counterproductive. I assume it's ad hominem attacks you object to.
Regarding "fresh views" in landscape, I'd suggest there aren't any, though I'm sure I'll be challenged on that opinion.
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Regarding "fresh views" in landscape, I'd suggest there aren't any, though I'm sure I'll be challenged on that opinion.
Well, suffice to say that you're unlikely to discover or create a fresh view in landscape if your tripod is one of 30 or more at Oxbow Bend in Wyoming at dawn (a comment to this effect was made by someone else in a LuLa forum.)
But what do you consider to be a "fresh view"? A style of composition? New subject matter? Or...?
If it was to be subject matter, then I'd argue that "fresh views" require being as much an explorer as a photographer and digital cameras have not yet been everywhere on this planet.
If it were to be composition, then perhaps it requires a more creative or alternative thought process - being more artistic.
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But what do you consider to be a "fresh view"? A style of composition? New subject matter? Or...?
You're asking the wrong guy, Dreed. Try Steve. I'd be interested to know what he has in mind too. There probably are some boring stretches of prairie or jack pine out there that haven't been photographed as landscapes, but it seems to me all the "memorable" landscape features have been done over and over.
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You're asking the wrong guy, Dreed. Try Steve. I'd be interested to know what he has in mind too. There probably are some boring stretches of prairie or jack pine out there that haven't been photographed as landscapes, but it seems to me all the "memorable" landscape features have been done over and over.
There's at least two wildcards here that I think you're ignoring.
The first is weather - in particular, stormy weather that is unpredictable.
The second is nature - volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, animals, etc.
To me it sounds like you're equating "memorable landscape feature" with "popular tourist attraction" - or something close to it?
Actually, to mention animals brings another photograph to mind - in one of the stores in Yellowstone, there is/was a picture of a bison standing its ground, surrounded by wolves. It leaves you wondering, "what happened - did the bison survive?" Is a photograph with an unanswered question more memorable?
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So you define pictures of storms, volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, floods and animals as "landscapes?" That's an interesting twist on the definition, but I don't think it holds up very well. Weather, maybe, though there are thousands of landscapes that include weather, including many of St. Ansel's. But I'd define the others more as photojournalism or wildlife shots than landscape, especially pictures of bisons being attacked by wolves.
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I do enjoy these discussions. I learn a lot from them.
I don't have a art history library or the knowledge to go with it, but I do know what I like and I fear if I had a certain level of education in this area I'd miss out.. or rather lose out on whatever fresh perspectives I'm personally capable of producing.
I write some short pieces for my site on the subject, not the 'educated' view you're knowledgeable with, but areas of art I think many miss out on for one reason or the other.
For instance, I regularly 'preach' (for lack of a better word), that when everyone climbs off the bus and points their camera at a popular scene, that perhaps it would be better to take just one or two snaps to say you've been there, but then to look around for what they're not pointing their cameras out. To look for what the others aren't seeing, or paying attention to. If a new landscape is to be had, chances are it will be had this way.
Also, weather was mentioned. I write a lot about using weather as a compositional element. When most people are home staying dry during monsoon season I'm loading up the truck in search of those few moments when the sun shines through a cloud break from behind or the side and produces a scene rarely seen. Weather to me, is just as important as the actual subject.
A loose analogy would be writing styles. Way too many 'decent' authors I know dedicate an inordinate amount of time following rules and guidelines by several writing greats. I think this is great for them. But if you're so consumed with following what those before you profess to be 'good writing', are you really leaving yourself free to discover and develop your own style of writing which 'may', talent providing, turn out every bit as good or better. Or perhaps turn out a fresh perspective that many others will enjoy reading on a regular basis more than just another rendition of the "same old thing."
I think there is no right or wrong between the two, well.. not unless someone insists. But I do think there is "interesting" reading and "not so interesting" reading.. as evidenced by the raw numbers.
Samuel Clemens was no slouch as a writer, and he was surely schooled in the classics. So was Edgar Rice Burroughs (some considered him a hack). Yet, when they set themselves free to look the other way from where everyone else was pointing their cameras.. their fresh perspectives produces novels I've never tired of reading. They became forever memorable to me.
What has any of this to do with your original point? Granted, not much at all. I just think "art history" has it's place and it's valuable knowledge and I thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. I just think there is more for the modern audience. I'll never find a place amongst the classic landscape photographers of yesterday. But just maybe, with a bit of luck and a free mind.. I might find a small niche with a modern audience. And knowledge such as yours is immensely helpful in my getting there. If I'm ever to get there.. ;o)
Thank you for the discussion.
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Apart from a variant on the +1 ethic, I've remained out of this one for a simple reason: it's never going to come to a conclusion. An end, certainly, but never a conclusion.
As to writing styles and whether they may have a negative effect when photography is treated in a similar manner, well yes, I think it's a fair point. There can't be any more Seinfeld nor even Friends with different chemistry, as House would be doomed without House. Hence the futility of apeing St Ansel or anyone else of note. What doesn't come naturally is forced and it shows, even if close. The only thing you can/should do is be yourself. That's why, to brandish my old Excalibur, stay away from gurus, all of them.
Rob C
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As a side note, I think that the concept of "quick qoogling", as a substitute for what scholars used to devote a lifetime to understand, and its impact on our understanding of the world, deserves at least an academic dissertation of its own.
Indeed, practically zero cost of access to knowledge in terms of both money and time must be scary to many, especially the elite who previously were the only ones with the means and who could afford that access.
Then again, they probably have nothing to fear given what (http://www.youtube.com/charts/videos_views?t=w) people actually spend time on.
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I don't think that's quite fair, feppe. After all, the old-fashioned way meant that one actually learned something, whilst the modern, instant acces trick only allows one to score a point, probably badly, because of lack of deeper knowledge of the subject being debated...
Don't think I can find an example, but I have sometimes felt that some replies here show exactly the instantly found fact without a deeper sense of its meaning and/or relevance to the matter at hand. Context and content are more than surface.
Rob C
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... zero cost of access to knowledge in terms of both money and time...
Hey, what happened to the saying: "you get what you paid for"? ;)
I am looking forward to my next surgery, done by a guy who googled how to do it... it will be extremely cheap though ;D
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Don't think I can find an example, but I have sometimes felt that some replies here show exactly the instantly found fact without a deeper sense of its meaning and/or relevance to the matter at hand. Context and content are more than surface.
And some replies on LL show an appalling ignorance of facts accompanied by statements unsupported by any research whatsoever. Plenty of examples of that, pretty much any discussion on politics, finance or economics is full of those.
Not that it's limited to LL - it's much easier to rely on familiar notions no matter how wrong they are, rather than constantly challenge oneself.
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Rob, I think there are two kinds of quick Googling. There's the guy who has absolutely no knowledge of a subject, does a quick google, copies a couple of quotes that appear factual, and then presents himself as an authority. Then there's the other kind of guy who does two things with a quick google: (1) he refreshes his memory of something with which he's already familiar but of which he's lost specific details, and/or (2) he's getting old and can't bring up names -- of people or of things. I fall into category (2). Can hardly remember my own name, not to mention the names of my 17 grandchildren or my 4 great-grandchildren. Old guys google.
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Rob, I think there are two kinds of quick Googling. There's the guy who has absolutely no knowledge of a subject, does a quick google, copies a couple of quotes that appear factual, and then presents himself as an authority. Then there's the other kind of guy who does two things with a quick google: (1) he refreshes his memory of something with which he's already familiar but of which he's lost specific details, and/or (2) he's getting old and can't bring up names -- of people or of things. I fall into category (2). Can hardly remember my own name, not to mention the names of my 17 grandchildren or my 4 great-grandchildren. Old guys google.
Or goggle! I remember my wife saying to me, once or twice after we'd passed a buxom lady on the street: okay Rob, you can pull your eyes back in now.
She seemed to find it quite amusing.
I'm relieved that you have difficulty with remembering names. I can't remember the names of any of my brother-in-law's grandchildren, nor can I guess at their parents' addresses. Even my two granddaughter's birthdays remain a mystery to me. Neither do I send birthday cards nor wedding anniversary greetings to anyone else: it isn't out of discourtesy, but that such things simply don't register on my mind. Even my own birthday escapes me most of the time, but I consider that a mercy.
Rob C
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stay away from gurus, all of them.
Rob C
"Drat, and drat again!" if I can quote one of my Gurus on this forum.
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"Drat, and drat again!" if I can quote one of my Gurus on this forum.
That's okay: 'tis only a deputy guru.
Rob C
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>Folks at MIT have been doing research into whether or not it is possible to algorithmically determine if a photograph is memorable:
What makes an image memorable?
There are many ways to reach a conclusion about something being memorable. Using algorithms is one, albeit a limited way. Computer logic only goes so far and is seldom conclusive. As a case in point, if “landscapes” are utterly forgettable, why then do they comprise such a vast amount of art work?
The article is really about a first attempt to measure the observer in an arena known as cognitive science. That the researchers select memorability by saturating people by a large volume on-going images and ask the subjects to remember something from the show, suggests that they are at best, looking at basic pattern recognition features and are not out to distinguish types of preferences for art.
Cognitive science is an interesting field. It hints at a lot of useful information but is a long way from most of the applications which would take full advantage of this kind of science, and relies very heavily on hair splitting conclusions.
Were a similar study done using nothing but works from any major museum, the outcome would have been different. Were they to conclude that a master’s work was un-memorable or less memorable, the conclusion would make a mockery of their study. So they (wisely, imo) stayed away from that approach.
The article reads as if they built the conclusion they were after by the images they selected. They disavow implication of greater application in their conclusion: “This work is a first attempt to quantify this useful quality of individual images.”
Thanks for the link but I'm not impressed.
Also having studied art history for a number of years, I'm compelled to point out that landscapes in Western art became of wide interest around the Renaissance (1500s). Even LdV painted landscapes http://www.tamsquare.net/pictures/V/Leonardo-da-Vinci-Arno-Landscape.jpg and there are increasing numbers of examples going foreword. In Eastern art, landscape imagery as a central subject goes back well over a thousand years.
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Justan, I'm sure you know a lot more about the history of art than I do. Can you give me an example of Western landscape from the 16th century that was pure landscape -- that wasn't a background for human figures, usually religious, and that didn't include the hand of man? The LdV you referenced is a drawing of a community that includes some landscape as its setting.
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I don’t know if Leo’s works are all available online but he did several ‘scapes. BTW The work referenced above is an drawing of a landscape with the community in the background. It’s the “Arno landscape” from 1473. Andrea del Verrocchio was one of LdV’s mentors and he too did landscapes, admittedly mostly as part of portraiture back to the early 1400s.
LdV “Birds eye view of a landscape” 1502
http://www.artist-todd-mallett.com/cgi-bin/enlarge4.cgi?cat=oil_artistv&ProductID=Leonardo-da-Vinci-Bird-s-Eye-View-of-a-Landscape
Albrecht Durer, 1495, Pond in the woods
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albrecht_D%C3%BCrer_106.jpg
Northern renaissance artists did a lot more ‘scapes than the southern ones did.
There is a lot more. Part of the distinctiveness of the Renaissance is the separation of art from being primarily an instrument of religious propaganda. This went along with the growth of a culture more interested in aesthetics and technologies than the ways of the former theocratic cultures. We are not so different today but then it was revolutionary.
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What culture would that be?
Western culture, for a start. Beauty as applied to landscape is essentially an invention of the English in the landscape garden movement of the 18th century, widely copied in the rest of Europe (the French grudgingly acknowledged the source, but called the parks 'jardins anglo-chinois'). The English landscape movement came about partly as a reaction to the rigorous symmetry and unnatural plant management of the French and Dutch. And of course England and France were traditional enemies too. The irony of the movement was that nature was to be 'improved' - it was too wild and unkempt to be left to its own devices. The great name here is of course Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, whose large-scale changes to parks owned by England's nobility earned him undying fame and considerable wealth.
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I messed up on one of the images i referenced above. It was a detail and not complete work, so I removed it. Here are some more landscapes by LdV
Study of a Tuscan Landscape, 1473
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_weTiHwuZsVo/S68fJ2IfZ-I/AAAAAAAACxI/gFyXuyAgba0/s1600/Landscape.jpg
Storm Over a Landscape, 1500
http://www.artchive.com/web_gallery/L/Leonardo-Da-Vinci/Storm-Over-A-Landscape.html
Drawing of mountains, 1511
http://www.universalleonardo.org/worklarge.php?id=353&image=0&trail=0&trailCount=&name=
Hurricane over horsemen and Trees 1518
http://www.universalleonardo.org/worklarge.php?id=354&image=0&trail=0&trailCount=&name=
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Justan, You're finding sketches with which I'm not familiar at all. They're very interesting, but they're failing to convince me that landscape was a popular subject in the 16th century. The first painting looks a lot like a map da Vinci might have knocked off quickly for a military campaign. I'm glad you dropped the second one because if that painting of a post with a landscape behind it is a landscape you could call the Mona Lisa a landscape -- with a woman cluttering up the foreground. The Last Supper also is a landscape if you look out the back windows. Too bad about those guys in front messing up the scene with their dinner.
The Dürer is the one that fascinates me. I see his chop up there in the sky, but mentally I keep comparing this sketch with his incredibly detailed and intense self portrait of 1500, and I think also about the vast amount of detail in his woodcuts and engravings. This painting makes it look as if he was resurrected in the late 1800s and joined the Nabis. If the British Museum is satisfied that it's genuine I'm certainly in no position to question that finding, but in my ignorance I wonder.
I'm impressed that you were able to locate these examples on the web. You obviously know your subject. But neither I nor Slobodan, nor Eric Kellerman have suggested that no one made sketches of landscape before the 18th century. What I said many posts back was that before the 18th century landscape was considered threatening rather than beautiful. I used a couple words that probably overstated the case, but I'll stand by my statement. Eric just summarized the situation very concisely.
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... But neither I nor Slobodan, nor Eric Kellerman have suggested that no one made sketches of landscape before the 18th century...
Indeed.
When an asteroid hit the Earth, it was a historic event. Brief, unexpected, unplanned, and unprovoked or caused by anything on Earth... an "out of the blue" event literally. The appearance of landscape as a genre in (Western) art was not an event. It was a historic process, that took several centuries.
During this period of evolution, landscape and human figure traded places: landscape started as a background for prominent religious or historic figures or stories, moved over time through middle ground, equalizing its importance and area it occupied with human figures or "hands of man", e.g., in the form of towns and villages, finally arriving to the foreground, though with human presence still visible, although much less prominently. But it was only in the 19th century when it finally got rid of the human presence (or marginalized it) and established itself as a genre.
Again, as in any historic process, it does not mean there were no isolated cases of landscapes without the hand of man before. There are always precursors to anything. There are always men ahead of their time (and if there ever was a perfect example for it, it would be Leonardo). Leonardo was also a scientist, engineer, and, yes, cartographer. It shall be noted, however, that those sketches, by him or other artists, are often used exclusively as studies for later paintings, where they would be employed as a background.
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> Let's face it, until fairly recently we regarded nature as demonic and ugly. It wasn't until Rousseau that that attitude began to change, and our current attitude toward nature is learned, not inborn.
> LuLa since I thought that what I'm saying was common knowledge among people interested in fine art, I need to qualify my original statement. I'm talking about western art. The art of the Orient took on landscape long before European art did.
> But, in the meantime, as an indicator of what I'm saying, look for Western landscapes painted before the Romantic period. They exist, but they're allegorical, and dominated usually by religious or genre themes.
> Can you give me an example of Western landscape from the 16th century that was pure landscape -- that wasn't a background for human figures, usually religious, and that didn't include the hand of man?
> But neither I nor Slobodan, nor Eric Kellerman have suggested that no one made sketches of landscape before the 18th century.
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Justan, Maybe neither I nor Slobodan nor Eric has been specific enough about the term "landscape." We're talking about painting for public consumption -- stuff that would hang in public places or in wealthy homes. None of your examples fits that description, but, as I said, maybe that's my fault for assuming we all were on the same sheet of music.
Let me fill in the rest of the statement you redacted:
"But neither I nor Slobodan, nor Eric Kellerman have suggested that no one made sketches of landscape before the 18th century. What I said many posts back was that before the 18th century landscape was considered threatening rather than beautiful."
There was no market for pure landscape painting before the 18th century and that's the reason why there wasn't. I use the term "market" advisedly, recognizing that the market mostly was commissions by the church or by wealthy patrons.