Some questions about Snapshots

[john sypal]

<p>For the sake of discussion among Street Photographers....</p>

 

<p>The wikipedia page for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapshot_%28photography%

29">snapshot</a> says "Snapshots are often imperfect or considered amateurish and may be out of

focus or poorly framed or composed."</p>

 

<p>How can a photograph be "perfect" or "imperfect"?</p>

 

<p>What is a snapshot? What makes a snapshot different than any other (hand held?) photograph? Is it

determined by how it was taken, or how it looks? The photographer's intent? Since we can't really know

what the photographer intended that seems like a pretty weak way to judge a photo.</p>

 

<p>Why might the fact that a picture looks like it "could have come probably anyone's family album" be a

factor in judging how strong a photograph is...?</p>

 

<p>I certainly do not have all the answers but am quite interested in hearing what everyone else here has

to say about snapshots and the snapshot aesthetic...</p>

[mischa_pringle]

I'd hardly use Wikipedia as a reliable resource for terminology, haha.

 

For me personally, I consider photos taken with minimal thought and little artistic/journalistic intention to be snapshots. Quite literally, snapping shots off without a great deal of consideration.

[thomas_sullivan]

the whole arena of categorizing pictures into nice neat little boxes is, to me, annoying as hell. I fully understand that certain words are needed to have a discussion about anything, but that is as far as they should be taken. They are concepts about what the picture is simply for verbal communications reasons. They should not be hard fact. A picture is a picture. It is black & white.............or it is color. anything else is purely conceptual. You could say it is mostly a portrait, or mostly a scenic, or mostly a snapshot..........but, put a tree in a portrait for nice background purposes and you've diluted the mostly portrain aspect. Scenics......add a person or an animal........same thing. Snapshot..........make it perfectly exposed and perfectly composed.........but still be of "just the family", and you've diluted wiki's assessment. It may not even be a snapshot anymore..........it might be now considered a candid family portrait

 

all those definitions do is VERY LOOSELY categorize a picture. And they do that very poorly at that. What those category's do, do quite excellently though..........is...........promote constant debate and discussion that has absolutely nothing to do with photography. And it also makes the critics seem much more knowledgable about photography that they ever really could be with out them

 

It's a picture. it is with or without color. that is it.

[ian_tindale]

I think a photograph ceases to become a snapshot when one stands a chance of getting paid for it, and can therefore afford to climb onto a high horse from which one can convince others that it's not a snapshot.

 

Incidentally, I quite liked Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong's snapshots they took on their moon holiday, back in the day.

[thomas_sullivan]

....now, if you want to talk about the aesthetic value of a picture. how it portrays the photographer's feeling about a given subject. The emotion that the viewing of the image transmits to the viewer. Now that is something that takes no words.

 

That's why is a PICTURE..............and not a novel. Novels don't need pictures to be understood, and images don't need words to be understood. That is why you will never get the right words to describe a picture..........because it's not a written or verbal communications............it's visual communications.........and should be left like that.

[jonathan_reynolds]

IMHO, a snapshot is (relatively) unsophisticated, in the sense that little deliberate choice has gone into its production, on either technical or artistic or humane fronts.<p>

 

The deliberate choices may begin long before - and end long after - the photo is taken, so the near-reflex action of a great photographer in grabbing a decisive moment does not make his photo a snapshot.<p>

 

Sometimes it <u>is</u> hard to see from the result where the intent lies. Isn't that why a collection of photos is more persuasive than a single shot?

[steve_bellayr]

A 'snapshot' is slang for a photograph that is a very small slice of time, with time being the predominant element. Its intent may or may not be artist. Burrows and Lange could be said to work within the confines of 'snapshot'. On the other hand Man Ray and Penn when they composed their photographs were striving for artistic effect on the viewer as opposed to a representation of an event, place, or person(s). Perfection and imperfection are relative terms to the viewer and the photographer. Some photographs stand alone others need a sequence to enhance their effect. Obviously, ones needing a sequence, when they stand alone are imperfect. 'Snapshots' become important when they elucidate events and places that no longer exist. A visual image of our community as it existed 100 years ago, even though it was taken by an 'amateur', are important. Examples are Alice Austen and Luke Swank.

[jonathan_reynolds]

Steve, surely every photograph is a short slice of time? Why does a photo present us with this slice of time rather than another? Someone had to choose when to press the button. Did the photographer merely press the button at the first easy opportunity, or did they hesitate, wait, and maybe change things until they had what they wanted? Were they aware of how the image would 'represent' the scene, or did they just press the tit and hope for the best? Did they choose a waist-up portrait, or couldn't they be bothered to move? Did they ask the subject to say 'cheese', or did they want to capture a scowling face? Was the inclusion/exclusion of background scenery deliberate or accidental?

[spanky]

SP is probably the one genre of photography where imperfection has to be accepted. It's like improvising music...mistakes can and will be made that's just the nature of the undertaking. I used to think auto focus cameras were the way to go but they take too long. Manual focus cameras are harder to get critical focus though especially at wide f-stops. So one chooses their poison.

 

I think the rise in digital cameras has created a more interest in SP due to the enormous amout of images that can be captured and stored on a small plastic card. What I have seen with those shooting digital is what I've termed the shotgun approach i.e shooting lots of images hoping one will have all the desireable elements in place.

I can see the logic behind this, but I still think it's better to begin SP or any type of photography with film until one learns about exposure and learns to think about the scene before pressing the shutter.

 

As someone who gets only 10 frames per roll, I've learned not so much to be selective (film is cheap) but rather to rely on some inner voice inside telling me when to press the shutter. Therefore just about every shot I take is a shot I really wanted to take. When I view the negs after development there are things that I may have missed like a distracting background or a slightly out of focus image but like I said this has to be accepted. I certainly have more "keepers" now then I did when I was shooting 35mm and also would sometimes shoot multiple exposures of a subject in the hopes one will come out. Just imho of course.

[m_.]

obviously i don't have any educated terminology in my head...

 

snapshot is the opposite of "posed shot" as far as i am concerned. and it is good enough.

[william_fong]

Good question. Only been thinking about this for a few minutes, but here are my thoughts. For SP, I believe a good photograph is one that means a lot to the viewer. A "snapshot" (in this context) is a photograph with very little meaning or interest to the viewer. Street photographs could be considered all the same. They are all "snapshots of unscripted life". So it is up to the viewer of the image (perhaps the photographer himself) to judge if it is a "good picture" or not. Just driving down the street, if I were to take a random picture of cars passing, no one really cares or relates. If I passed by the scene of an accident, it would trigger something like if the viewer has been in an accident before. A picture inside a busy hospital may not mean much. But a picture of a woman giving birth, or after a disaster, can bring much more meaning.

 

Something like that...

[Uhooru]

All the lines converge and divurge. A random, non-concieved and hastily executed snap-

shot taken with no thought as to content, context or execution can be the "hightest" art.

Likewise conceptual art projects can totally devalue the meaning and value of any single

photograph other than that meaning imposed by embedding it within a concept. So, i

basically just punt on this issue because there's not really an answer, but there is a

discussion.

[akikana]

A snapshot is a photograph that takes less time to look at than it actually took to take?

[peter_evans4]

<p><em>How can a photograph be "perfect" or "imperfect"?</em></p><p>Perhaps it is a bit silly to talk of a photo being perfect, though I do think that some can hardly be bettered so I suppose "perfect" is a fair description. But to me it's entirely understandable to talk of a photo being imperfect. A photo that would be bettered had the camera been turned X degrees (etc) is imperfect. (And no, I don't mean by this that all horizons must be horizontal, etc etc).</p><p><em>The photographer's intent? Since we can't really know what the photographer intended that seems like a pretty weak way to judge a photo.</em></p><p>I think it's often fairly easy to judge a photographer's intent (at least when the photographer is no better than mediocre). Evidence: the other photos that the photographer thinks are worth preservation/display.</p><p><em>Why might the fact that a picture looks like it "could have come probably anyone's family album" be a factor in judging how strong a photograph is...?</em></p><p>The majority (not all!) of the content of most (not all!) people's family albums is pretty dreary; thus to say that a picture looks like it could have come from any of these is condemnation indeed. A large percentage of these photographs are all too posed (in an unimaginative way) and deliberate: e.g. girlfriend/schoolmates/grannie in the centre, in front of Famous Place, staring dutifully at the camera. Nothing random about them. (So perhaps they're not snapshots.)</p><p><em>Burrows and Lange could be said to work within the confines of 'snapshot'.</em></p><p>If this is Dorothea Lange, then yes, I suppose so -- but it's untrue of her most famous photo of all, which was taken in a very deliberate way (and subsequently edited).</p><p><em>I'd hardly use Wikipedia as a reliable resource for terminology, haha.</em></p><p>As somebody who has put a considerable amount of time into editing Wikipedia and who knows it fairly well, I'd agree. It's surprisingly good in some areas but sadly photography is not one of these. There are some good photography articles (e.g. that on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felice_Beato">Felice Beato</a>); perhaps individual readers here could "adopt" their own photography-related article and help to improve that. (E.g. the article on the king of snaps, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Erwitt">Elliott Erwitt</a>, is perfunctory and could easily be improved.)</p><p>While you're waiting the period of years while Wikipedia is laboriously being improved (battling the best efforts of thousands of halfwits eager to remind the world that <a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50902">Eric is a fag</a>), put your zlotys into your copy of the flawed but fascinating and admirable <cite>Oxford Companion to the Photograph</cite>: the (posed) "snapshot" it presents of James Murray (editor of what was to become the <cite>OED</cite>) on the beach is one of its many gems; in combination with a few other photos in the book, worth the price of admission even before you start reading the text.</p>

[Spearhead]

It's certainly interesting that the French title of HCB's "The Decisive Moment" was translated as "Snapshots" and "Quick Shots" before it was published in English.

 

I think the term has been treated as derogatory, whereas it is really just another way of shooting. It's interesting that both Eliot Erwitt and Ellen von Unwerth have books titled "Snaps." I have Unwerth's book, it's the stuff that wasn't shot for Vogue or Geuss Jeans, it was shot in between. Wonderful stuff, especially with her high contrast, high grain processing.

 

What seems to be very cool about "snapshots" is that it boils down to whether or not we like the photo, rather than any kind of "higher meaning." Take a look at the magazine Hamburger Eyes, much of it is what could be called "snapshots" and it's wonderful because the photos are always so engaging. A totally different aesthetic from what we see in a magazine like Lenswork. (I'm not knocking Lenswork, I've seen some great stuff in it, but it's the anti-snapshot magazine.)

[michael s.]

<< ... It's interesting that both Eliot Erwitt and Ellen von Unwerth have books titled "Snaps." I have Unwerth's ... >>

 

And I have Erwitt's. Pages of great photos. Hundreds of them.

 

The use of that term as a pejorative evidently didn't trouble either of those photographers.

 

Around here, and elsewhere, you often see the term "snapshot" often preceded by the words "just a" -- and it's less descriptive than it is an effort to 'grade' a picture.

 

For me it would be far more descriptive to say "studio" or "street" or "nature" or "architectural" or "wildlife" or ......

 

Telling me something is a snapshot is not providing much info -- that's a shot someone snapped. Most likely it's not in a studio setting using controlled lighting, I guess. But when my kids bring home commercial school portraits I wonder. Typically they're nowhere near as interesting to me as some of the snapshots we take of them ... or better yet, the ones they take of themselves and each other.

[mtreinik]

<p><blockquote><em>snapshot is the opposite of "posed shot"</em></blockquote></p>

 

<p>Not quite. You can take a snapshot of a posed arrangement. Think about uncle Bob with a disposable camera sneaking at the official wedding photographer's formals.</p>

 

<p>Snapshottedness can't be determined by subject matter. It's more about the process (or lack thereof) by which the photo was taken.</p>

[Uhooru]

Nicely said Jeff.

[m_.]

>>You can take a snapshot of a posed arrangement. Think about uncle Bob with a disposable camera sneaking at the official wedding photographer's formals.

 

good point. still you did not pose your subject, though someone else did.

[jonathan_reynolds]

Isn't there a photo by HCB (or possibly Doisneau or Erwitt) where he has done exactly that? The wedding party is assembled on a pavement (=sidewalk), and everyone, including the official photographer, is laughing at the cheek of the unofficial intruder. Is that a snapshot?

[jtdnyc]

"Snapshot" is an old term borrowed from hunting. In that context, it means a shot made without taking time to aim carefully; nothing more, nothing less. I think that's a meaning worth preserving when the word is carried over to photography, as there doesn't seem to be a handy synonym for it.

 

As a result of not taking careful aim, many snapshots -- in photography as in hunting -- miss their mark. But that doesn't mean that missing the mark is what defines a snapshot, nor that any photo that misses its mark is therefore a "just a snapshot." Nor does the essence of the snapshot depend on whether the subject is posed or not. All of these conditions may sometimes apply to snapshooting but, at least by the word's derivation, they do not define it.

 

Was Cartier-Bresson a snapshooter? Compared to Atget, yes. Compared to Winograd, hardly.

[phyrpowr]

I use two different definitions, I guess.

 

The good one: a picture taken quickly, even hurriedly, of an ephemeral subject that the photographer could not be certain would appear, but done as well as possible at the time. Example: I have a shot of a beautiful young Navajo woman talking to a beautiful older Euro woman in Santa Fe, at the jewelry bazaar, both smiling. I could figure out that there would be a byNw, and could guess a boEw would appear, but to catch the two together, I had to shoot fast, That was a snapshot, but I was ready with shutter speed and aperture dialed in for the lighting

 

The bad one: a shot taken with no thought to anything other than to get the whole subject in the frame, when a small amount of extra effort would have given a much better shot. Example: tourist who just sees the, e.g., Eiffel Tower in the hazy distance for the first time, at noon, points, clicks, says "OK, I got it", moves on, doesn't try for another perspective, time of day, etc.

 

 

Compare to the use of the term "postcard shot". To experienced and dedicated photographers (like us), it means a mundane shot that "everybody" has taken, to a regular sane person it means "wow, that's great"

[frank_skomial]

I use term "snaphot print size". This means to me that the original intention was to print at smaller size like 4x6", and therefore certain things were allowed, that would otherwise require a different technique or more elaborate photo setup.

 

After the picture was taken, you may loose way to determine if that was a snapshot. In this case, if the quality is poor, composition, lighting or other aspects, then I would tend to say that was a snapshot, even if the picture was taken with utmost care.

 

Some snapshot pictures are great taken quickly without much preparation, and would not qualify as snapshot, looking at them after they were taken.

[Allen Herbert]

Hmm, folks are too obsessed by simple terminology and gear frothing. Be obsessed by your photographic ability and vision.

[Allen Herbert]

Serious obsession frothing whether a Leica M8 is better than a Canon something or other in the minuet differences of banality.