Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Isaac on January 04, 2014, 02:17:19 pm
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7 photoworks commissioned articles exploring different perspectives on the question -- What makes a good photograph? (http://photoworks.org.uk/category/ideas/idea-1/)
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Well, certainly not listening to opinions from other people. It has to be individual opinion of what's 'good' that matters, or we end up with a prescribed catechism of ins and outs, leading to much the mess that seems to be what the hip custodians of contemporary photography seek to perpetuate.
If you spend enough time reading about the so-called great modern snappers, you might be forgiven for thinking that mediocrity rules and that subject (even at the cost of technical quality) is all important, especially subject that embraces the more seedy aspects of today's living or, better still, the painfully banal. And if it's big, it's irrefutably better. Apparently.
It's easy to mock some of the old greats of the immediate past - poor old St Ansel comes to mind - and by naming him in that manner perhaps I'm as guilty as the next, but though I think his work has been over exposed in media terms, I still have great respect for what he managed to get out of film and a sheet of paper. Like it or not, his photography of the wilderness is quite majestic and technically brilliant and, at the very least, that earns him the accolade of producer of good photography.
There are many other photographers who produce work, within their own field of interest, that leaves one quite impressed and somewhat intimidated by the display of photographic pyrotechnics that they can pull out of a box with a lens stuck in the front. And by pyrotechnics I refer not just to the technical aspects of craft, but as importantly, the ability some have to put the viewer unequivocally right into the middle of the experience. That's some power!
So no rules, just results.
Rob C
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+1, Rob. And, to paraphrase Justice Stewart: "A good photograph is like pornography. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."
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Hi,
In my world a photograph I like is a god one, a photograph I hate may also be a good one. A photograph that doesn't evoke emotion may be a mediocre one, but it may evoke emotion in another viewer.
Best regards
Erik
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Well, certainly not listening to opinions from other people.
So that's all we need to read of your comment ;-)
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So that's all we need to read of your comment ;-)
Absolutely; honesty will out.
;-)
Rob C
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A good photograph is one I can look at and feel "jesus, I am good!"... the day I finish it... and still feel the same 2 years later. ;)
Needless to say, they are few and apart.
If I try to analyze the common point between those, what I see is essentially the quality of the light.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Absolutely; honesty will out.
Well, an honest lack of interest in other people's opinions.
When I read those photoworks articles, I'm given a brief opportunity to step outside my way of thinking and that makes the world seem a bigger more interesting place.
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In my world a photograph I like is a god one, a photograph I hate may also be a good one. A photograph that doesn't evoke emotion may be a mediocre one, but it may evoke emotion in another viewer.
Yes, we are able to respond to photographs with more than a Facebook "Like".
Although, if all we have is "Like" dressed-up in other-terms then perhaps we should just admit that a good photograph is one that a lot of people "Like".
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It's a silly question, Isaac. Before you can even talk about what makes a good photograph you have to decide what you mean by "good." Were Robert Capa's photographs from Omaha beach -- the ones that were almost totally destroyed by an incompetent processor -- "good" photographs? From the standpoint of photojournalism they certainly were. From the standpoint of pixel-peeping they were lousy. "Good" varies from one point of view to another.
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Well, an honest lack of interest in other people's opinions.
When I read those photoworks articles, I'm given a brief opportunity to step outside my way of thinking and that makes the world seem a bigger more interesting place.
The trouble is, Isaac, when you've been a working snapper all your life, you realise that much of the stuff written about photography is a load of pretentious crap, designed for the consumption of idiots and the magnifying of manufactured reputations. I was given three excellent links to documentaries on famous - really, and justifiably famous - snappers this morning, and they filled both my morning and my afternoon. And you know what? their honesty and belittling of the nonsense built up around their worlds was so refreshing. If I can paraphrase one: "you can't get egotistical about it; you have absolutely nothing to do with it - just lucky enough to be born with it." I'd never before seen any of these documentaries, but it was quite pleasantly reassuring to discover people I respected shared my own view on photography and its art: you can't friggin' teach it and you probably can't even learn it: you already have it or you do not.
So whose opinion should one trust? That of a gallerista trying to flog the work; that of a teacher selling his time as best he can? Of some curator leeching onto the back of the thing? Or just use your common sense and agree that if it feels right, then it probably is right, and ain't that good enough reason to buy or simply to like?
Rob C
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Well, an honest lack of interest in other people's opinions.
When I read those photoworks articles, I'm given a brief opportunity to step outside my way of thinking and that makes the world seem a bigger more interesting place.
After you have stepped out do you bring any of other's thinking back into your own world or does that trundle merrily along, as usual? Personally I have long struggled to explain what I like in a "good" photograph. To me it is an instinctive feeling based on my personal likings and dislikes. :)
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I'm prepared to offer a couple of recent shots for discussion, which I think are good photos, if that will help. Perhaps someone can tell me why they are good photos, or not, as the case may be. ;)
They are shots of the World Peace Pagoda in Pokhara, Nepal. A Japanese Buddhist monk by the name of Nichidatsu Fujji was apparently greatly inspired by a meeting with Mahatma Gandhi in the 1930's and decided to devote his life to promoting world peace. After World War II, he began organising the construction of shrines to world peace, in Japan and many other countries.
The attached images were taken from my hotel.
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If it evokes a reaction or feeling in the viewer, it's a good picture.
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Ray those a both good shots. They evoke peacefulness and beauty for me. Even without the captioned comments in your post. That's important because pictures should mostly stand on their own unless they're part of a photo essay. Even then, they should work without the words to a large extent. But the things that makes them good is that the viewer stops and looks and feels. The content and image can inspire. Techniques are just the mechanical way of getting there and each of us have different methods. But in the end the photo must move the viewer.
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7 photoworks commissioned articles exploring different perspectives on the question -- What makes a good photograph? (http://photoworks.org.uk/category/ideas/idea-1/)
Aaaaaaahhhhh! Not this topic again - please oh ye kind and compassionate god! Run away! Hide under the couch!
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Aaaaaaahhhhh! Not this topic again - please oh ye kind and compassionate god! Run away! Hide under the couch!
No room - I'm already ensconced!
;-)
Rob C
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Ray those a both good shots. They evoke peacefulness and beauty for me. Even without the captioned comments in your post. That's important because pictures should mostly stand on their own unless they're part of a photo essay. Even then, they should work without the words to a large extent. But the things that makes them good is that the viewer stops and looks and feels. The content and image can inspire. Techniques are just the mechanical way of getting there and each of us have different methods. But in the end the photo must move the viewer.
Alan,
I have to say that you have great discernment and taste to be able to appreciate the beauty and sublimity of my photos. ;D
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Think nothing of it. :)
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After you have stepped out do you bring any of other's thinking back into your own world ...?
Sometimes, sometimes not.
I pretty much accepted Rob C.'s view on the difference in creativity, the distinction, between making and taking photos ;-)
Even when I don't accept the thinking, but I can see that it's reasoned and coherent, there's now a space for that thinking in my world -- I'll reconsider how it fits as I come across other ideas.
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It's a silly question, Isaac.
If we'd actually read those photoworks articles...
The question is, of course, too broad and too general, to be really meaningful. Photography is too capacious a category and ‘good’ is too porous an adjective.
So, in that ‘good’ implies something affective and effective, and that photography, when ‘good’, really means, for me, an artful, deliberate and clever kind of photography, the best way to answer this question lies in thinking about why a particular example of photography is ‘good’ beyond being an epitome of its genre.
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Aaaaaaahhhhh! Not this topic again - please oh ye kind and compassionate god! Run away! Hide under the couch!
No one's forced you to read the posts, and no one's forced you to add to them.
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... but it was quite pleasantly reassuring to discover people I respected shared my own view on photography and its art...
Shock! Horror! Man agrees with confirmation of his own opinion and ignores different opinions!
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Aaaaaaahhhhh! Not this topic again - please oh ye kind and compassionate god! Run away! Hide under the couch!
No one's forced you to read the posts, and no one's forced you to add to them.
Isaac I THINK he was trying to point out it was possible for you to try and start a topic that was a little more original and a little less problematic with respect to stirring up controversy but I guess that wasn't your intention? BTW the previous four posts were made by yourself. I suspect you wanted to keep the topic live. ;)
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I THINK he was trying to point out it was possible for you to try and start a topic that was...
It's just as possible for you to try and start that topic.
the previous four posts were made by yourself.
Each a belated reply to a comment someone else made days before. Expect a reply to Bernard's comment.
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Shock! Horror! Man agrees with confirmation of his own opinion and ignores different opinions!
If you want to troll, might as well get a boat.
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I see you still have nothing to say about the photoworks articles you didn't read because you weren't interested.
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No one's forced you to read the posts, and no one's forced you to add to them.
You cannot possibly be serious - right? If you don't understand what's going on then it is best to be silent.
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If you don't understand what's going on then it is best to be silent.
No -- The Emperor's New Clothes.