Originality has too much weight in the rating scale

[timothy_eberly]

My only suggestion is to remove the originality portion of the

rating system. There are categories in photography where it just

doesn't apply. Landscapes and portraits for instance. A mountain is

a mountain is a mountain. Anselm Adam's work would rate really low

on the originality scale if we reposted his work, so let's toss it.

Or better yet, keep it, but lower it's overall importance factor. It

has too much weight in the rating system. half the value is way too

high. You could do a simple calculation and cut the value in half,

or more, prior to figuring the total (average) value of both

Asthetics and Originality.

[michaelseewald]

Boy am I with you on that. An overall lackluster image can keep getting bumped higher. A close-up of someone picking their nose, for example, is 'original' and if it's a sharp bugger watch out for both ratings to be high!!? A lot of very good work is buried deeper into the ratings.

[jamesp]

I disagree. Whenever I browse "top photos" I go by the originality rating. Loads of photos have good aesthetics but still bore me to death. To each his own, but if we were to do away with the originality factor I think we would face a barrage of velveeta landscapes with a total lack of emotion or message.

[root]

Michael, I find your second to last upload aesthetically pleasing, but it's the unusual split image framing and perspective that set this one apart. That's originality, the ability to see an intersting way of presenting what could easily have been just a hack canal or corridor shot.

[timothy_eberly]

Original does not make the photo attractive. If you find a photo interesting it should AUTOMATICALLY be original to some degree. It's a given, if you ask me.

[everitt]

<I/>Original does not make the photo attractive. If you find a photo interesting it should AUTOMATICALLY be original to some degree.</I><P>

<P>

Uhhh, isn't finding photos that are interesting and appeal to you what ultimately decides for yourself if you like a photo? The subject matter and the way it was presented is far more important to me than the techincal aspects of a photo. I don't look at a photo and say to myself "Wow, that's an amazing picture! Look at the sharpness and detail in that picture!" If given the choice between a grainy, blurry, interesting photo and a perfectly sharp, yet boring photo, I'll take the former 100% of the time. Someone could show me all the perfectly composed, super-sharp, yet boring and generic images they wanted to, and I still wouldn't find any of them interesting.

[chkfoto]

I agree totally with the incorrect use of the Originality rating. A shoreline is a shoreline, a leaf is a leaf. None of my images are original. But they may be Aesthetic.

 

I think Originality should stay but be used correctly. Very few, but beautiful, photos on this forum should not have it as a high rating. Yet, they should have a high Aesthetic rating.

[hanna_cowpe]

It's not the category of originality that's the problem, it's the misuse of it. Originality should not pertain to the subject but rather, how it has been photographed. People tend to shy away from giving more than a 2 point (and in most cases 1 point) difference between aesthetics and originality. It seems most images on the TRP are first rated for aesthetics and then rated according to that for originality because the rater likes the image and doesn't want to diminish its average.

[aardvarko]

<i> Originality should not pertain to the subject but rather, how it has been photographed.</i><br><br>Well-put, and agreed.

[rich_evans]

Once or twice I've commented to others that IMHO, the interpretation of 'originality' is extremely subjective. In order to attempt to more clearly define how an image can be evaluated, I would prefer to see something like "Technical Merit" and "Visual Impact".

 

I want to be able to help someone by giving meaningful critiques on their technique or ability to 'see' something differently - not merely hand out platitudes about how pretty their photos are. I've pretty much given up on critiquing since from what I've seen, many of the comments on 'page 1' TRPs contribute little to helping the photographer improve their craft - many are probably not interested anyway, they just want their image on page 1.

 

Of course using these terms then brings up questions about technique re: the actual mechanical push of the button vs. how well one uses PhotoShop for instance. Or whether or not a specific lens was best for a certain type of image. --Rich

[timothy_eberly]

This is much more apt to help a photographer such as myself. For instance a high or low visual impact rating on my 'death plays chess' makes sense, since there is nothing new about a chess board, or smoke. I really cannot see someone rating 'death plays chess' high on the originality scale since I was not the one creating the smoke outline of death. Does that make sense?

<br><br>

<a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/2602435">'Death plays chess'</a>

[root]

No it doesn't.

 

Luck counts. The instant recognition of the shape of a man in your image is highly original. It's the old saw about chance and being prepared.

[jhenry]

Timothy, I agree with your definitions "Technical Merit" and "Visual Impact" instead of Aesthetic and Originality.<p> IMO there is no real original pictures anymore... degree of originality is nowadays a matter of ignorance... <p> impact, message, humour is more on this side I guess, so when I give a rating on originality it's more those criterias that I 'judge'.

[john falkenstine]

Technical merit? Doesn't make sense. Technical "is"; merit "could be"; or "might not"

[blago]

Add but not subtract criteria

 

 

There's only one eternal binary choice - "like/not like" or "good/bad", or "go/no go". But PN is a site for learning and such a simple definition is just not working. I want to know why I like this photo and don't like the other one you like. I want to compare photos and photographers. That's why I need some more tools - not only the single aesthetics - even not only aesthetics and originality. "Impact" and "Technical quality" have been discussed many times. All these abstract terms are difficult to define, however, they could be extremely useful in the process of learning. They help learners to talk to each other, to analyse pictures, and to build an artistic taste (style). What's the most important, they help us to understand photography, because seeing is understanding, isn't it?

 

Usually we accept the aesthetics (A) and originality (O) criteria as interconnected vessels. If A is more, than O should be less and the opposite. "I don't like/understand your picture but I'm giving you more value in originality trying to say two things: I respect you as a photographer, from one hand, and I could be wrong, from the other." That approach is far more civilized that any senseless argument on the like/not like basis. Nevertheless it's not reasonable. The A and O criteria are strongly connected (I wrote about it somewhere) and their numeric values cannot differ a lot.

 

Is photography a VISUAL art? Sure, and we could find the originality in the unusual lines and forms, compositions, specific lighting conditions, visual tricks , and so on. Is photography a visual ART? "Art" in the general sense of means used by people to communicate with each other, to share visions, moods, emotions, thoughts, and so on ? Yes, it is. Here we have to search for the originality "behind" the picture - concepts, memories, stories, jokes, whatever you like, because understanding is seeing, isn't it? And we won't miss to search "in front of" the picture, too. Where the photographer himself is - the main subject of all his photos.

Could a photo that's not very attractive visually be beautiful. Of course, if very original, if there's something behind/in front of it that makes you think, cry, or sing. And that "something" is another aspect of the aesthetical judgement. In fact, we have a lot of different criteria for originality and aesthetics, never mind there are only two boxes under each photo. :-) Merging all of them on the like/not like basis is the worst decision. It means to replace knowledge with intuition.

 

Finally, let me point to a great photo, imo, though not having an immediate visual impact.

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/2119399

 

Sorry, I don't know the author's name (one of the Picture This club).

Regards. Blago

[timothy_eberly]

Luck and originality.....hmmm. So what then is original? A nice sunset? Never. A still life? Nope. Portrait? No. A shot taken from a low/high angle? It's not original. Luck maybe, but why is that such a big disappointment to some of you? I was lucky to catch the smoke the way I did. People are lucky to catch sunsets the way they do. So what? Luck is a bigger part of it than originality. Ansel Adams waited for the right lighting before taking some of his shots. Does that make his shots original? No. As a matter of fact, one could say he was lucky to catch the light just so. (even though he waited).

[blago]

Timothy

 

Everything could be original if the photographer has an eye and a mind for the original (unexpected, peculiar, incongruous, and so on), if he's making up (and not only taking) his pictures. Look here for original portraits

 

http://www.photo.net/photodb/top-rated-photographer-photos?user_id=482100

 

A lot of original stills around, I pointed to one of them in my previous post. And if you manage to capture a cat jumping across the disc of the setting sun I'll be the first to nail you a 7 for originality. Regards. Blago

[mottershead]

My opinion about "originality" is refelected in the ratings Tutorial. It is not about how unusual the subject is. Otherwise, the only thing that could be original would be something like a photo taken on the dark side of the moon by an astronaut. (And even that wouldn't be so original, since it would probably look more or less the same as the bright side, which has already been photographed. For that matter, it probably would look like Arizona.)

 

Rather, originality is intended to reflect the freshness, cleverness, thoughtfulness, sensitivity, humor, etc of the photographer as he approaches a subject, even though the subject itself may have been photographed literally billions of times.

 

As for whether it has too much importance in the rating system -- perhaps it does, and if we were starting over I doubt we would have these two scales. But it is hard to change it, now that hundreds of thousands of photos have already been rated using the two scales.

 

Besides, the importance of originality on this site only parallels its importance in Western art for the last 150 years or more.

[Sandeha Lynch]

Repetition is an interesting feature of rhythm ... :)

<p>

But more seriously, take the following:

 

<b>mountain light sun shadow reflection tree water moisture</b> and <i> time shoot wait walk move still memory</I>

<p> Not an original word among them, but watch how different individuals might put them together.

[michaelseewald]

Very well put. The whole idea, for me, is to see a scene differently than anyone has done before, or at least present it differently. Yes, it takes thinking, and that is not what a lot of people are willing to do before clicking the shutter.

 

I make an average of 1.5 photos per day when I'm out looking/working in a 16 hour day. And yes, a lot are not 'original', whatever that means, but they have a wow factor, or at least I hope they do. I guess it's more looking than shooting in my case.

[timothy_eberly]

"originality is intended to reflect the freshness,cleverness, thoughtfulness, sensitivity, humor, etc " <br><br>

What does that mean? I hate to say it but that seems just as hard to give points for as orginality. <br>

What category, other than orginality, would you score "Death Plays Chess"? Seriously, I have no idea.

[hanna_cowpe]

Why do we even want to bother with changing the rating criteria? It all comes down to numbers anyway and numbers don't mean the same from one rater to another. If we want to give a more specific judgement of a photo, isn't that what the comment section is for?

[chubbs]

if you change the rating be sure to make it easy to get high ratins for our work becasue thats how we make friend.s

[chkfoto]

I think that often when we are rating "originality" we are really rating "unique" because the images really contain things we don't see or see in context everyday. But the things contained in the image are not original.

 

So maybe it should be the "uniqueness" of an image that we rate. Originality should still be there but used with care.

 

At New England School of Photography in Boston we would have a "critique" session every week. I always felt the more you had to talk about a visual (photograph), the less that visual worked.

[timothy_eberly]

"I think that often when we are rating "originality" we are really rating "unique" because the images really contain things we don't see or see in context everyday."

<br><br>

Yes, but some people think that smoke that takes the shape of a skull over a chess board is not very unique. Why?