"Great" Photography

I will try to ask this question without making a fool of myself or

getting anyone angry! ;>)

 

In a previous thread, another forum member made a very accurate

comment: "Vivid colors do not, by themselves, make a great picture."

 

I am on my Leica adventure to try to get myself out of the

photographic doldrums and do something new with something new. I am

getting tired of all the same old landscapes, and rocks, and sunsets,

and brides, and such, and want to explore new roads...thus, all my

questions and comparisons, including this one.

 

This question is a bit off the topic of Leica equipment, but can be

applied to Leica Photography.

 

If it's not vivid colors, or dynamic composition, or deep emotional

impact, or whatever, in your opinion, what are the basic components

of a "great photograph" regardless of the subject? or, perhaps there

is not such thing!

 

...and please, if you think the question absurd or stupid, feel free

not to comment.

 

I'm interested in your ideas. Perhaps some other members are also.

Sometimes when you're flipping pages in a book, or going through a stack of someones pictures, you get "stuck" staring at and admiring one of them and you don't even think about why. If a lot of other people have the same reaction that's a "good" photograph. If editors and art directers and museum curaters and art critics have that reaction it's called a "great" photograph.

Emotional impact and composition, plus a big dose of technical expertise are what is of importance. The thing is - we're talking about photography as an artform, which is entirely subjective. You are going to get as many opinions as there are going to be answers to your question. Just as you have gotten tired of the same old 'landscapes and rocks...etc., there is probably someone else on this forum who is tired of shooting the same old portraits and wants to experiment with rocks and landscapes. I shoot what appeals to me emotionally, and try and compose it in an interesting manor, and I'm a pretty fine printer....but I still know that there are a whole lot people out there who have no interest in my stuff whatsoever.

IMHO a great photograph activates my imagination while entertaining my visual senses. It makes me want to see more. If a photograph shows it all up front without leaving any room for imagination or thought, I'll lose interest in it. Vivid colors, dynamic composition, et al are only tools the photographer may or may not use to make his/her point. Gratuitous use of any attention-grabbing tool (such as indiscriminate use of Velvia) leaves me thinking the photographer didn't have a clear idea of what (s)he wanted to show me.

As the great portraitist Arnold newman likes to point out: "we

make photographs with our heart and with our minds. cameras

are just tools."

For me a great photograph is one in which I can almost feel the

photographer's insistance that we 'look at this!". A photographic

image that commands my attention and then stands up to

repeated scrutiny & viewing, is my criteria. This results,I think,

from many things, but basically I sense that photographer's

mind and emotional self at work, of that awareness distilled into

the formal terms (framing, composition, timing, sense of light

and color) of a photograph. Everything inside the four edges of

the photograph has to work together to achieve this with no

distracting elements. The image can be awkward, it can be

pristine, it can follow aesthetic rules or it can rebel against the

pious orthodoxies of "style" but it has to sing its own "song"

clearly.

Well, I don't know how to quantify it, but it has to be there; the photographer's passionate involvement with the subject matter. That's one thing that drives the difference between 'good' and 'great'.

See Bill Jay's essay "The Subject Matters" in a recent "LensWork" magazine.

couldn't tell ya'. i have yet to make/take a great photo... i made a couple of decent ones, mostly because i managed to capture something close to a "decesive moment".

Well, all of the above. 1st, I think, it should tell a story or convey some sort of interest to the viewer. Then all the usual technical details are second in importance, to me anyway.

I'm going to add some pepper to the stew:

 

I forgot to mention in the question the issue of "uniqueness."

 

This relates to whether a photo is trite or original (unique).

 

Often a well executed photo is rated low because it is not "original" or "unique."

 

One of my criticisms of the Photo.net photo critique rating system is the "originality" category. It is very hard to be totally original. A sunset is a sunset. Horses walking on the beach are like other similar photos. I doubt if there are any truly original or unique photogrphs any more. How is Adam's Monolith: The Face of Half Dome qualitatively more unique or original than ten million other well executed photographs of the same subjects?

 

How does uniqueness enter into the stew of great photography?

 

(Aside: This was a major issue debated at length in the 1980s in art schools and produced some very weird and bizarre images to meet the uniqueness criteria! If any of you are familiar with images like "Piss Christ," that would be one example).

You don't have to apologize for being off topic. It's an important and thought provoking question. What could be more ON topic than your question, seeing that the entire reason for the existence of the Leica is to produce Photography (ideally, good or great). I think Al Kaplan's definition is very good, and to the point. In response to what you wrote, I just wanted to add that I believe the process is entirely in the realm of spirit at both the beginning (artist's vision) and the end (viewer's reaction); and entirely of a material nature in the middle. Therefore intensity of color, hue of color, composition, tonal range, depth of focus etc. are only means to an end. They are only a vehicle which conveys the content from the heart/mind/gut of the artist to the heart/mind/gut of the viewer. I think this explains why, in one photograph, heavily saturated color is preferable, and in another image, much less saturation (or monochrome) may be the ideal. It depends which one better conveys the content.

-Ollie

 

www.web-graphics.com/steinerphoto

It does help if the subject matter is compelling. I think relevance is a better yardstick than originality or uniqueness.

 

One can only view so many rocks and sunsets, regardless of the quality of the bokeh . . .

 

Only a handful of people in history, regardless of their field of endeavor, have produced anything unique.

Todd, There are so many different audiences for a photograph.

And so many photographs. We are literally swimming in images

all through our daily lives. The human mind hungers for news.

The human eye has become conditioned to sorting the

thousands of images it incounters looking for something

relevant to that specific persons' needs, emotional, spirtual or

intellectual.

 

In my advertising work, we seek the POV that will effect the most

people at a given time. In this environment, capturing the

attention of 20 million people in a way that's relevant to them is

considered "Great". And photography (motion or still), is a

primary tool to do that ( The eye is faster than the ear).

 

So, my question back to you is...who do you want to exclaim " that

is a great image"? You? Us? Your friends? " That is great" is a

human reaction, so you have to decide which humans you want

that reaction from...starting with yourself.

 

After hundreds of millions have seen the commercial work I've

produced over the years, it has become less satisfying because

it is distant and impersonal, just a statistic to me creatively. But

to stand there and watch a young bride with tears of joy in her

eyes because of a touching photo I made just for her, well, it may

not be a great photo, but it sure makes me feel great. And at this

late stage of the game, one on one gives me far greater

personal satisifaction than one on 20 million. Just an opinion.

Claims of uniqueness or the opposite are shiboliths. As you

delve into such non-issues you are moving away from

photography and into wordplay. Either the work is good or it isn't.

Now if you sat me down at a desk and made me look at twenty

fat portfolios of images of the same landscapes by different

photographers and 19 of them are essentially, postcards that

just tell me "look I was here and the light was really nice and I

made technically acomplished photographs" and don't have an

element of "I was in this place and these are my reactions to

what that experience was like.' but one portfolio does have that

quality, then I'm going to think more highly of that one portfolio.

Too many people thinkthat just being technically accomplished

means your are making good photographs. well all I can say is :

that is only the beginning. <P>Mastering technique is only your

baby steps, you still have to learn how to see.

Technical basics are usually a "given." Old parameters such as composition, background, and exposure do matter. Still, this can congeal into the sort of camera club parochialism that can promote technically perfect but paralytically boring images(e.g., dreadful still lifes, taxidermic portraits, Eisenhower-era postcard landscapes, etc.). We're all a bit media-adled, too, and it seeps into our work, whether we're doing this for fun or for fun and money. Fitting in also appears to matter far more than communication. It's that last, elusive quality that images I consider "great" all share.

If someone elses photograph...

 

1) Will I want to own this photograph in any form? (postcard , book , original print on wall in frame etc.)

 

2) Did it epitomise an age or a moment in history or represent a person or a thing or place like no other picture?

 

If its my own picture (and thus a completely different definition of 'great')...

 

Do I want to keep it , exhibit it , show it to friends , family colleagues , public , send off to magazines etc.. Basically , am I proud of it? Did it sell? (I am an Amateur but I am lucky enough to sell a number of framed prints regularly now. Small bucks but nice when it happens.)

 

Although selling my own stuff is good for the ego I would not be big-headed enough to compare my output with the REAL 'Greats' so that is why I emphasise the different criteria.

 

I will not list people whom I consider 'Great' photographers because we all have a different list.

 

Hmmm , such a subjective question like, "what makes a 'great movie'?"

 

I'm sorry Todd I can't really define 'great photograph'. Can any of us? We can name photographs/ photographers we think are great but the elements of greatness can never be known in advance of their appearance in this realm otherwise we would all have the recipe.

 

Further complications arise when an artist is despised/ignored in his/her own time and only the passing of time and taste bestows 'greatness'.

 

It is always a danger to give the public exactly what they say they want because innovation is never the result. No-one ever knew they wanted the art of Bach or Van Gogh or HCB or A.Adams until those very ingenious fellows produced it. Their product (horrible word I know!) could never have been predicted and defined as a requirement before the event.

 

If you are feeling stale then experiment and take chances (or drugs!) and make lots of mistakes and go to different places with different ideas. (Or the same places with different ideas. Look what what Bill Brandt did in later life with his human 'landscapes'. S**t I named one. Sorry.)

It's generally best for photographers to let other people worry about whether their work is great and, with the time saved, shoot more pictures.

 

W. H. Auden observed that no poem is finished, merely abandoned. For photographers, that sentiment might mean not resting on one's previous accomplishments but continually striving to improve and supercede, change and adapt.

 

One shot is successful in as much as it compels you to take another.

Think about photographs as food. What is great food?

 

In general, people have consensus about what is great food. Otherwise, business is going to be very hard for restaurants.

 

There are many factors to make one food different from the other (or the same as the other). Some people like sweat, some people like spicy. The great food to some body might be terrible to other people. For example, I don' like the taste of alcohol and tobacco. And I believe most people don't like them when they first try them. After a few tries, some people start to like them and think they are great. Some other people like me still think they are terrible.

 

If you had too much the same kind of "great food", you might feel that it is not great anymore (like sunset photos). You might not think fast food (postcard) is great but for hungry people, it is great.

 

Great food is easy to make and also very hard to make. You need good materials, good kitchen equipment, and good skills.

In general, food in expensive restaurants is better than in cheap restaurants.

However, food made in expensive restaurants sometime (to rich people) are not greater than food made in cheap restaurants (to poor people).

 

 

It is the same for photograph.

Todd, a very relevant and thought provoking question.

 

I think a great image is usually the result of a number of things working together, and is rarely the result of a single factor. A fine wine is said to have a good balance, and I believe that could also apply to a photographic image. It is possible that too many photographers spend too much time searching for the magic means (or latest gimmick) that will hopefully invest their images with some unique quality or impact. It has been my experience, however, that the "impact" that obtains from such means pales quickly and cannot sustain interest over time.

 

It is likely that most good fine-art photography is the result of the marriage of one's individual vision with the requisite technical ability or craft knowledge that will allow one to effectively manifest one's dreams. As I mentioned before: Vision without technique is bad, but technique without vision is a disaster (paraphrase of Kung-Fu-Tzu). But essentially it rests upon the artist to say something expressive, illuminating, or fascinating. An artist-photographer can express something far more evocative with some ordinary, banal, or homely collection of objects than another photographer can through his slides of the Taj Mahal (or any of the other obligatory "must see" attractions on the earth). This is undoubtedly because the non artist merely seeks to capture the grandeur of the thing outside, while the artist seeks to communicate an inner, personal, variety of visual poetry from a source within.

 

I think it is often good to tire of things - at least if it causes one to look deeper or further.

 

Regards,

I don't mean to be too simplistic. But for me what make a great photograph is one that either inspires the viewer or the artist or both. What ever that quality(ies) is not as important than "it inspires"

 

When we get TOOOOOOO bogged down with the why's, how's, what's, when's we somtimes become blind to an inspiring picture and are look at the pictures flaws or technical inadequacies. For me it is that "it inspires!"

To me, a great photograph is something that stays with you. It's something memorable, and it conveys something to the viewer.

 

I know that's a bad definition, along the lines of "I know it when I see it," but it's the best I can do right now.

Todd,

 

Don't worry about originality. If you see a subject you want to photograph, go ahead and do so. Who cares if lots of other people have already made photos of the same subject? It's only trite if you deliberately set out to mimic other pictures that you've seen.

 

Why do so many people take pictures of sunsets, horses on the beach and other old favourites? The reason is because they are trying to make a picture that is aesthetically pleasing to them and such scenes are sufficiently attractive to offer the potential to do so. The fact that many photogs have already done a similar thing shouldn't matter, IMHO, although it will probably result in unfavourable criticism from other people who are tired of seeing such images.

My 2 cents. It depends...

To me, I like the old-school traditional avalible light candid style, and my most favourite snapper being Elliot Erwitt, then HCB, Kertez...

I seek surrealism in my photos... because it is often timeless and I have no control over the 'moment'. I think trying to capture the 'decisive moment' is not just clicking at the right time, but more so from the photograher's awareness of the constant flux of time and elements... if a photo 'hits' me (beyond the bokeh and other technicals), then I think it's great. It is very hard with this kind of premeditated photography, because it requires full commitment and concentration without intruding it... But I do find that most of the time, only abou 10% of my shot I KNOW exactly, before cooking the neg and printing it is a great shot, and I will not be able to 'capture/create' it again!

...

Todd, all I can tell you is that which I keep trying to tell myself:

 

I sure hope somebody doesn't look at a picture I shot and then say: "What does this picture say?". Or, even worse, "What is this picture tying to say?"