Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => But is it Art? => Topic started by: Slobodan Blagojevic on July 24, 2014, 06:01:26 pm

Title: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on July 24, 2014, 06:01:26 pm
Brief, funny and surprisingly accurate  :)

http://missymwac.tumblr.com/post/89281833650/8-easy-ways-to-know-if-an-image-is-fine-art

P.S. Point D could explain this current thread on LuLa (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=91935.0) (sorry, Dave, couldn't resist :P)
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: KirbyKrieger on July 24, 2014, 07:14:09 pm
Stupid, asinine, inaccurate, dated, close-minded, and ignorant.

YMMV.  No more surprising than it is surprising that some people when faced with a challenge to their understanding respond with denigration.  My friend.
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on July 24, 2014, 07:51:17 pm
Gee, man, has your sense of humor been surgically removed at birth!?
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: WalterEG on July 24, 2014, 08:03:30 pm
Gee, man, has your sense of humor been surgically removed at birth!?

I suspect not Slobodan,

Perhaps simply his own words put into action:  "when faced with a challenge to his understanding he can do little else but switch to denigration."

Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: mezzoduomo on July 24, 2014, 08:50:53 pm
Nothing to see here. 'Sense of humor' and many other terms, like 'fine art' are equally (100%) subjective.
Pick up the pace, Slobo. This whole section of LuLa is flagging....

 ;D  :)  :D  ::)  :-*
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: KirbyKrieger on July 24, 2014, 10:22:08 pm
Gee, man, has your sense of humor been surgically removed at birth!?

Let's leave aside your irrelevant argumentum ad hominem.  That you found the blog post worth reposting, and funny, and seem surprised that I find it ignorant unkind and hurtful, says things about you and about me — which in some context is interesting, but not so much here.  I don't partake of these forums to be entertained; I read and contribute to learn and to teach.

I think the blog post you emphasized by posting a link here is a hackneyed response to a hackneyed and, I had assumed, moth-eaten straw man.

If it was just your attempt at "a funny", then we have nothing to discuss.

But funny isn't all you presented: you said it was "funny and surprisingly accurate".  What parts are accurate?  Why does that purported accuracy surprise you?

Let me mention what I see:  someone mocking something they don't understand, and mocking people (mostly beginners) who are trying to do something serious, well.

What do you value that?  Why do you promote it?

   
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: KirbyKrieger on July 24, 2014, 10:36:26 pm
I suspect not Slobodan,
Perhaps simply his own words put into action:  "when faced with a challenge to his understanding he can do little else but switch to denigration."

I figured someone would lob that pebble though that open window.  Can you specify what you think I don't understand?  What I am challenged by?  To me it is glaringly obvious that the blog poster doesn't understand much (I have responded on the blog), has no interest in understanding, and furthermore is much more interested in (an interest shared by the OP here) the frisson of shared denigration than in understanding.  While it is logical to apply my syllogism to my own response, I don't see how it logically fits.  Do you?

Again, if Slobodan simply said, "This is hilarious", I would not have responded.  What he said, though, was that it was "funny and surprisingly accurate (emphasis mine)".  I claim it is not accurate.  Do you disagree?  On what basis?

It is, to me, an accurate embodiment of a species of clubby willful ignorance twinned to an impulsive need to casually denigrate.  
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on July 24, 2014, 10:41:04 pm
... I don't partake of these forums to be entertained... If it was just your attempt at "a funny", then we have nothing to discuss.

Finally we agree on something!

I indeed can not discuss anything with people who "do not want to be entertained," who think "fun" is a serious business, who take themselves and the world too seriously and too literally.
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: KirbyKrieger on July 24, 2014, 10:52:52 pm
Finally we agree on something!

I indeed can not discuss anything with people who "do not want to be entertained," who think "fun" is a serious business, who take themselves and the world too seriously and too literally.

Hmm.  Another whiff of the irrelevant argumentum ad hominem.  Rather witless, that, but I suppose the compulsion is all of a piece. 

What you describe is not discussion (https://www.google.com/search?q=discussion&gws_rd=ssl) — it seems you are more interested in chit-chat.

Do you retract your claim that the blog post you cited is accurate?

Do you agree that the "fun" comes from denigrating others by falsely attributing thoughts and acts to them?
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on July 24, 2014, 10:54:46 pm
Somebody call the security! ;)
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: KirbyKrieger on July 25, 2014, 12:07:01 am
Somebody call the security! ;)

I'm guessing you have Charmin on speed dial   ;) ;) ;) .
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Dave (Isle of Skye) on July 27, 2014, 03:22:25 pm
As I am, or at least one of my images is the subject of this very lively discussion, I feel as though I should add something to it, but after first writing a long reply, I have now decided to keep out of it, other than to say in my defence, that when I made the image as referred to in one of the links above, that I did so late at night and in a relatively dark room as it had become and without me noticing. It is not until I now look at the image in the cold light of day, that I realise just how dark it really is, so perhaps I will have another go at it and repost it at some point, although I must admit that I do like it as is and all the elements within it, it was never meant to be a pretty picture.

I always thought that controversial work, or at least work that causes much discussion and disagreement was a good thing, it gets your work noticed and I do seem to occasionally have that effect here on Lula, getting comments about my work ranging from 'That is the worst image I have ever seen' - yes Peter, I have not forgotten and still have sleepless nights thinking about that.., through to WOW!, amazing and sublime etc.

Kirby, I don't think Slobodan meant any offence by what he did and certainly no offence was taken by me, but yes I agree it might have been a bit of a low blow for someone other than myself, who has now become quite used to the occasional kick in the shins on this forum.

Pax vobiscum

Dave
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on July 27, 2014, 05:10:21 pm
... in my defence..

Do not worry, Dave, you are in good company! Take, for example, this guy, in a recent LuLa thread (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=91988.msg748096#msg748096), who tried to make his image darker than it was in nature, in a pathetic attempt at fine art  ;)
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Tony Jay on July 27, 2014, 06:19:47 pm
Kirby, I think you may be pushing the aggression a bit far.

I have known Slobodan for a while now (via this forum) and I don't believe he is a malignant fellow in any way.
He is possessed of an unusual and wacky sense of humour, however, and he likes to mix a bit of humour and a bit of wisdom in eclectic ways.

To me you seem be taking things far too SERIOUSLY.
As irreverent as that blog post is there is some truth to it.
The fact is that points are stretched to make the humour apparent.
BTW I teach an enormous amount (in disciplines distant from photography and art to be sure) and I find humour, and the counterpoint of examining an apparent piece of accepted wisdom by pushing it to the ridiculous very useful teaching techniques.
So humour and learning (teaching) are not opposite but in fact apposite.

For mind, Slobodan is worth much more as friend than as an enemy.

Tony Jay
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: PeterAit on July 28, 2014, 08:15:26 am
Funny! I would add a 9th: The price makes your jaw hit the floor.
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: ErikKaffehr on July 28, 2014, 09:52:51 am
 ;D

Gee, man, has your sense of humor been surgically removed at birth!?
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: melchiorpavone on August 14, 2014, 04:47:44 pm
The more "artistic" a photograph is, the less importance it has as a photograph.
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Misirlou on August 14, 2014, 08:27:27 pm
P.S. Point D could explain this current thread on LuLa (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=91935.0) (sorry, Dave, couldn't resist :P)

Slobodan,

Check out the grungy train pic in this thread. Some insufferable jerk did the same thing as that other ass with the Teton shot:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=92369.0 (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=92369.0)
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on August 15, 2014, 11:22:04 am
 ;D
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: lumiway on August 20, 2014, 02:53:28 am
I thought it was funny
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: sharperstill on August 20, 2014, 06:15:02 am
"Let me mention what I see:  someone mocking something they don't understand"
1) how do you know they don't understand?
2) what if they DO understand and decide to go ahead and mock it.

I'm far more likely to mock something I do understand than something I don't. You seem to make a lot of presumptions in your pompous assessment of the blog post.
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Stanmore on August 31, 2014, 07:29:51 pm
I don't find it particularly funny. I do find it particularly predictable though, just like pretty much every piece of self-proclaimed 'fine art' photography I've ever encountered. The term has for me, and I suspect many others, become synonymous with a hackneyed waste of viewing time - Hence responses such as the OP's linked list.
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Gulag on September 01, 2014, 12:41:20 am
"I can’t tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that art has often judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past has suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. I know too that the powerful fear art, whatever its form, when it does this, and that amongst the people such art sometimes runs like a rumour and a legend because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us, for it is inseparable from a justice at last. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts and honour."

- John Berger, Ways of Seeing BBC Series, 1972

Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Stanmore on September 01, 2014, 06:45:37 am
"My work explores the relationship between Pre-raphaelite tenets and unwanted gifts.
With influences as diverse as Caravaggio and John Lennon, new insights are distilled from both traditional and modern discourse.
Ever since I was a postgraduate I have been fascinated by the endless oscillation of the human condition. What starts out as hope soon becomes finessed into a hegemony of lust, leaving only a sense of failing and the unlikelihood of a new synthesis.
As subtle phenomena become distorted through emergent and academic practice, the viewer is left with a hymn to the limits of our condition."
- Simon Stanmore, via Arty Bollocks dot com, 2014

For me, there is a huge distinction between art and what I termed "self-proclaimed fine art photography". Art is exposure and risk taking from its creator, and provokes emotional and/or cerebral responses in the viewer. What I termed as 'self-proclaimed fine art photography' provokes only disappointment and a motivation to move on to find something actually worth digesting. Unless of course this is the first time the viewer has encountered the endless stream of poorly treated landscapes, nude women awkwardly/bizarrely draped over said poorly treated landscapes, PS composites squeezing every last drop of their 'inspiration' from long-faded 70's prog rock album covers, camera club mentality floral 'abstracts', or - and yes, I have seen this all too often - the family cat.

Fine Art Photography (esp. self-proclaimed) :: Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, & Storm Thorgerson did this already ...  really rather well ... in long-distant decades when it was still somewhat fresh.
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Gulag on September 01, 2014, 04:40:23 pm
My question to you all is whether or not this can be called a "Fine Art" landscape photograph. Please share your wisdom with all of us. Thanks.

(http://www.thomasstruth32.com/smallsize/photos/b07431.jpg)
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Stanmore on September 01, 2014, 06:31:28 pm
My question to you all is whether or not this can be called a "Fine Art" landscape photograph. Please share your wisdom with all of us. Thanks.

(http://www.thomasstruth32.com/smallsize/photos/b07431.jpg)


I don't think I would even call it a landscape photograph, but whether or not it's dubbed fine art - or art - is not up to me: It's up the the individual that elects to hang up it somewhere to be viewed; be it the photographer, a gallery's curator, or a child with a fridge magnet.

My issue with the term 'fine art photography' is that 9 times out of 10 such titling leads me to a collection of imagery that is a pale imitation of countless imitations of a decades old subject/style combination. I have no problem with anyone shooting any subject in any way they like ... All I'm saying is that the specific three words 'Fine Art Photography' is something that almost unfailingly leads to disappointment (for me). As a result of my perspective on this, and in the context of this threads original post and subject, I am not surprised when others try to lampoon this phrase and/or those that elect to use it.

...that is all...
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Gulag on September 01, 2014, 08:57:20 pm
If you don't think it's a landscape piece,  I'll appreciate if you can explain what you believe "landscape"  ought to be.
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Stanmore on September 02, 2014, 07:19:32 am
Just like THIS of course!...

(http://www.ihd-wallpapers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Landscape-wallpapers-8.jpg)
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Diego Pigozzo on September 02, 2014, 08:42:05 am
My question to you all is whether or not this can be called a "Fine Art" landscape photograph. Please share your wisdom with all of us. Thanks.

IMHO I would argue that yes, this is a fine art landscape.
Firstly of all, from the image you posted the photo looks very much like a Pollock painting and it conveys very well the huge varieties of scales of the nature.
Secondly, at almost 3 meters by 3 meters it must have a huge amount of details which (as Mr. Reichmann says in his comments on how He shot Sunrise Road) is vital for the composition.
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Gulag on September 02, 2014, 07:33:18 pm
In Western art, the definition and aesthetics for landscape genre have never been static and they keep evolving throughout centuries.  In Paradise 9, we can see the aesthetic influences from works of art in the first half of the 20th century, namely classical modernism. for example, we can identify the similarities that can be traced back to Pierre Bonnard's The Terrace at Vernon (1928).

(http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/easel/gallery/images/terrace_1.jpg)

here is the artist himself talking about why he shot the way he shot this:

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2008/11/theory-thomas-struth-talks-about-his.html

Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Incastone on November 21, 2014, 07:48:31 pm
Just like THIS of course!...

(http://www.ihd-wallpapers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Landscape-wallpapers-8.jpg)

Awesome. What lens did you use for that?  ;D

If Gulag and Kirby are representative of the people on the 'fine art' scene, I'm staying the hell away from it. Can you imagine them at a party? Jeez!
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Michael West on December 01, 2014, 09:04:44 pm
Brief, funny and surprisingly accurate  :)

http://missymwac.tumblr.com/post/89281833650/8-easy-ways-to-know-if-an-image-is-fine-art

P.S. Point D could explain this current thread on LuLa (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=91935.0) (sorry, Dave, couldn't resist :P)

  loved the Example Image He posted!
Title: Re: 8 Easy Ways to Know if an Image is Fine Art
Post by: Isaac on December 02, 2014, 11:19:21 am
My question to you all is whether or not this can be called a "Fine Art" landscape photograph.

Quote
"The very concept of landscape itself implies a cultural view of nature.

The landscape pictorial tradition is disassembled, since these are no longer landscapes in the sense of landscape as a cultural convention of viewing nature. Nature is not framed as a tourist spectacle as it is in the picture of El Capitan. … The work resists connotation and brings us up against a pure photographic seeing with minimum association, just the dense accumulation of details of natural phenomena, out of time and bereft of any social or historical information."

page 176 Photography Today (http://books.google.com/books?id=Ebv7ngEACAAJ)

Reminds me of some Eliot Porter photographs.