Why are some subjects so widely favored by viewers?

[AJHingel]

<p>Sorry to be late but I thought it worthwhile going a little back in the discussion. Fred wrote:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>In part, I was responding to Anders, who said: <em>"By rejecting them and defining ourselves as different, better, more knowledge, more select - we actually confirm the 'more favored subject' as the rule."</em> I don't think that's necessarily the case. As with civil rights, by rejecting the norm we may not (just) be confirming it, we may be changing it as we confirm to to others that it IS the norm, one worth changing.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>We were not discussing "rejecting norms" which is always inherent in any system changing action. We were discussing something much more limited which were the question of Dan, why some subjects are "universally regarded) like: Sunsets. Flowers. Palm trees. Puppies and kittens. Babies. Happy, confident- looking young women. For such norms to be widely accepted norms, marginal behavior is to a large degree confirming the norm, because of their marginality.</p>

[jtk]

<p>Anders, if I understand what you're saying, it's that "marginal" is responsible for "norm." </p>

<p>Does this fit your statistical bell curve model: It's the strongly compelling and the dismal failures that account for the lumpen blob in the middle?</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>John, the bell curve is surely not "mine", but it is an illustration. However, I'm not sure norm distribution always come out as what in statistical terms is called a "normal distribution" (your "bell curve").</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>Once, I was visiting Yosemite Park. There's an entrance to the park where you drive through a tunnel to the other side when you enter the Valley at a place they call Inspiration Point, a perfectly deserved name. I remember leaving the car and walking to the edge and taking the whole valley in with the 1200 foot high Bridalveil Falls, Three Brothers, Sentinel, and the valley itself. I was <em>awestruck</em>! It was spiritual. It made me feel so small. It took away my ego and and made me feel as if a minute creature in an ever expansive universe. It was humbling. It was wonderful. I didn't want that feeling to leave.</p>

<p>The best photos get closest to capturing that feeling. A feeling of awe. A feeling of humility. A sense of our limits. A rendering of love. A thing of the spirit. </p>

<p>We all try to capture that feeling with photography in our own way. Through sunsets, through people, through portraits, through excitement and action, by surprises, through love. So that we can re-experience the feeling and share it with others.</p>

<p>Not sure I answered the question. </p>

[dan_south]

<p>I think you answered the question quite thoughtfully, Alan. You've responded in the spirit of my original query, and I appreciate your insights.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>My answer would be that because like me, most are probably exposed only to the types of photos you describe. I don't have much exposure to the arts and it takes a lot of time and study to acquire more and more art appreciation, for lack of a better pharase.</p>

[hjoseph7]

<p>"Some subjects seem to be universally regarded. Sunsets. Flowers. Palm trees. Puppies and kittens. Babies. Happy, confident- looking young women. Frozen moments of athletic or artistic performance."<br>

=============================================<br>

I also wondered about that myself. The average person is first drawn to people picture, next comes nature or beautifu scenes in nature, but why not something different ? I guess because this is what makes us human. </p>

<p>There was a comedy TV sitcom in the 1960-70's called "The Munsters" a family of creatures from the dark side. Their standards of beauty was widely different and sometimes opposite that of the average human. They would say things like "What a beautiful stormy day", and "Isn't the view of the cemetery just spectacular !".</p>

<p> We humans are hard-wired to be drawn to things that are comfortable and familiar. I showed my mother some of my best prints and the only ones she stopped at were the ones that had a familiar person in them. "Isn't that a beautiful picture of so and so" she would say.</p>

<p>It would be a great photographic excersise to stretch our minds and photograph subjects that are not so familiar not so comfortable, to think totally out of the box. Some have tried it, but I doubt if those images ever got past the point of curiosity in the viewers mind. </p>

[cooltpmd]

<p>Lot's of thoughts, but I agree that the tone of some posts is judgmental toward "beauty". I am many times the contrarian view here. There is nothing wrong with being attracted to, diverted by, moved by, transported by, inspired by art/photography. I don't blame the sunset & flower because they have become common sources for photos ... I think that's why they are there.</p>

<p>As humans we have senses (ie vision, hearing, touch) that varies. We have interpeters (ie brains) that are different. We have environments that vary. Strangely, there are sounds and visions that get a more universal positive response. We are drawn to mothers faces, sunlight, color, space, and body curvatures ... we don't require teaching for these. My frustration comes more when I find beauty and my photograph (while technically competent at times), can't recreate the response I felt in that environment. </p>

<p>I think its less honest when the artist ventures into "art" that is intentionally avoiding appeal to avoid "selling out". It is rebellion for rebellions sake.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>A feeling of awe. A feeling of humility. A sense of our limits. A rendering of love. A thing of the spirit.<br /> We all try to capture that feeling with photography in our own way.<br /> . . . So that we can re-experience the feeling and share it with others. --Alan Klein</p>

</blockquote>

<p>What makes this forum interesting is that we don't ALL try to capture these things or approach our work this way.</p>

<p>This description is precisely why most pictures of Yosemite bore me. If I could find in photos of Yosemite something of the flesh, I might be moved. I'd like to find the photographer who connects with Yosemite rather than (just) being awestruck and humbled.</p>

<p>Photos often create (rather than re-create) feelings of their own.</p>

<p>Bridges, trees, sunsets, people, city street life, flowers, pets may (or may not) be captured. Photos are made.</p>

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<p>I was making pictures of an empty house for a real estate agent and when I went outside to take the exteriors I saw this bunny sitting in the garden.<br>

Took me by surprise that one, and it felt good looking at it just minding its business and hopping around and I took a quick pic of it. It looked soft and fluffy.</p><div></div>

[AlanKlein]

<p>Phylo: Your picture is what I was talking about. It's not only about capturing the light physically. Certainly we all can comment on that, how the bunny is in the middle, what is that ugly concrete at the top, why so much foreground out of focus, etc etc. etc.. But you also caught the light emotionally. What human can look at that round, inocent, bunny and not say, how cute! This is when photography gets good, when you tap into the viewer's emotion and spirit. That is why people pictures especially of family are so well liked and hard to compete with landscapes and other categories. When you look at someone you know and love, it brings back the good feeling. So as was mentioned, their mother only stopped at those family shots when she's looking.</p>

<p>But family pictures are pretty easy to get applause. It's trying to get the same response from other formats that is so frustratingly hard to do.</p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>It seems to me that you were taking a photo of your emotional response not just a photo of a bunny rabbit.</p>

[Brad_]

Many people take comfort with subjects and situations easily understood.

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<p>Allen, I don't think that I was taking a photo of my emotional response but that it was more my emotional response to take a photo of it. Part of my emotional response was seeing the bunny as a synchronistic little gift to erase my prior emotional responses with, and which consisted mostly of feeling tired towards the end of a long workday and still having to drive home for an hour in busy traffic-hour. But all of that is not what I also took a picture of or what's shown in the picture, nor was it meant to.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Phylo: Your picture is what I was talking about. It's not only about capturing the light physically. Certainly we all can comment on that, how the bunny is in the middle, what is that ugly concrete at the top, why so much foreground out of focus, etc etc. etc.. But you also caught the light emotionally. What human can look at that round, inocent, bunny and not say, how cute! This is when photography gets good, when you tap into the viewer's emotion and spirit. - Alan</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes. There are many emotions and spirits to tap into. When I took the bunny picture, I was't thinking from out of a photographer's perspective, I wasn't trying to make the bunny into a photograph. I was catching it with my camera and its cute'ness was a given. It would be a far better photograph of a bunny, if it showed only the bunny.<br /> The rainy wet concrete, etc,..begins to do something to the picture in all of its non-photographer imperfect seeming snapshot'ness and when imaginary placed in a context of some fictional familyalbum for example, it may become part of something else entirely.</p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>"Allen, I don't think that I was taking a photo of my emotional response but that it was more my emotional response to take a photo of it.</p>

<p>The same path, Phylo.</p>

[dan_south]

Harry, excellent post and ideas! Familiarity is probably a big part of the answer. Look at all of the people who'd rather

take a pre-packaged cruise or a pre-arranged vacation to a resort or theme park than go explore some historically and

culturally significant place like Vienna or Prague. Entertainment for the unadventurous.

[Alex_Es]

<p>Man, what a truly poignant question. </p>

<p>People like cliches. Something else is irritating. </p>

<p>It is true that people like sunsets (the redder the better) and nekkid wimmin. They also like gore. All those things are thrilling in some way. A person filling his gas tank is not thrilling. </p>

<p>I realize that I have wasted my life as a writer and a photographer. I should have written S and F novels like Judith Krantz and taken photos of flowers and sunsets. Nekkid wimmin have to be paid to be nekkid. Flowers don't even need model releases. </p>

[andrew_gardiner]

<p>Its because ,to put it bluntly,its extremely difficult and quite brave to come up with anything at all original and so most people just copy,copy,copy received conventions of pictorial interest and beauty ( and I'm not excluding myself from this sorry bunch ).<br>

The hardest thing in photography is not technique, exposure,whatever... its finding a subject to photograph and some actual ideas you want to explore. Its about using your head not just your eyes.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>It just hit me sitting here that there is another reason for the pictures people take. It has nothing to do with quality, lighting, emotional or spiritual but just one of capturing a moment in time. How many pictures do you see posted to this web site where the pictures are taken just to capture the moment? And they are nothing special. Just shots. I've done that. I look at them and think they're so great because they remind me where I was that I froze time. There is still, even after shooting all these many years, something magical that you can capture a moment in time and then see it later, like going into a time machine. "Look at that car with the bent antenna." SNAP. "Look at the bird flying in the air." SNAP. And then we have to wait to delvelop the film like in the old days and see the timed image again (maybe that's why film is making a small comeback)> Or we look into that little 3" screen or our monitor when we get home and are amazed at the magic we just conjured up. Who cares if it's out of focus? Who cares if its too light? Who cares what we shot? There it is again, just like I saw it, just like I lived it, and I created it!</p>

[ldavidson]

<p>I want to capture beauty, joy, and happiness in my photos. I like to see the same thing other's work. I want to be enchanted, taken to a magical place. I don't want to ignore all the misery in the world but looking at beauty makes me feel hopeful. I can believe that there is still goodness and magic in the world worth capturing, celebrating, and sharing. This is why, I think, people love sunsets, simply because they are beautiful and stir the soul. You can be drawn in and held up by that beauty. All the hatred, the poverty, the violence, bigotry, pollution etc. in the world is forgotten and you sigh "Awwwh" and for that moment you are transformed and enchanted. It is a healing meditation. I get that feeling when I see a sparkling raindrop on a flower petal, a wild animal grazing in the wild, or a sensational sunset. It doesn't always have to be traditional; it can be dark and mysterious, or it can be ordinary every day stuff. I can see magic in a polished fender at a car show or ever at a salad bar; beauty is everywhere. Some people only see it in a limited way, in specific areas, because their eyes and minds haven't fully opened yet. Like children who have only tasted vanilla ice cream and don't want to try the other flavors because they know that vanilla is good.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>Yeah. I was like that as a kid. Vanilla only. I've gotten braver as I've gotten older. I've branched out! Vanilla chip when I'm at Häagen-Dazs. Pistacio Almond at Baskin Robbins and Cherry Garcia at Ben and Jerry's. Yum! With photography, I'm still stuck on landscapes. I guess I'm still a kid.</p>

[cyanatic]

 

<blockquote>

<p >Thomas Powell: I think its less honest when the artist ventures into "art" that is intentionally avoiding appeal to avoid "selling out". It is rebellion for rebellions sake.</p>

</blockquote>

<p > </p>

<p > </p>

<p >Thomas -- There may be people who actually do this, but it strikes me as a bit of a strawman argument. How many people would intentionally put forth something that is unappealing, solely on the basis of its being unappealing? There is usually more behind it than that. There have certainly been rebellious movements in the arts, but there has been thought, a rationale, behind those rebellions. And sometimes artists create something out of the norm merely because they see something in a different way. Eggleston, Frank, and Sherman have all popped up in other discussions recently, but they'll suffice as examples of photographically "seeing in a different way". For some people, viewing new or different works is as appealing as viewing quality examples of tried and true conventions is to others. And they don't have to be mutually exclusive, either.</p>

<p > </p>

<p > </p>

<p > </p>

<blockquote>

<p >Dan South: Look at all of the people who'd rather take a pre-packaged cruise or a pre-arranged vacation to a resort or theme park than go explore some historically and culturally significant place like Vienna or Prague. Entertainment for the unadventurous.</p>

</blockquote>

<p > </p>

<p > </p>

<p >Strikes a chord with me, Dan. Although I can appreciate artificial environments, I've never understood their appeal compared to "real" environments. I far prefer the old mob run Vegas to the faux Paris, New York, pyramid kitsch of today. I'd rather go down a real river than an extruded plastic tube at Disneyland. It doesn't make me superior, or that which I prefer superior. Yet everything has its place. Kittens are cute, sunsets are beautiful, and roller coasters can be fun. </p>

<p > </p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>There's nothing wrong <em>per se</em> with rebellion. It's how new things are discovered. Somebody tries to do or be something different. It often proceeds creativity.</p>

<p>People have a great need to be noticed. To stand out from the crowd. To find their place in the he sun. Rebellion and doing things differently than others are great ways to be noticed. It reminds me of that saying. "I'd rather be a leader in hell than a follower in heaven." </p>

[jtk]

<p>Alan...your perspective seems to be moving around (a good thing: perspectives better that way). </p>

<p>First you argue the virtues of the herd (<strong>Spiro Agnew's </strong>"silent majority"). </p>

<p>But then: "People have a great need to be noticed. To stand out from the crowd." They need to be "rebels?"</p>

<p>I'm confused..don't they shoot the same things in the same way (the "golden mean" you advocate) as their neighbors (anti-rebels?) and send the work away to avoid printing their own specifically to avoid standing out? </p>

<p> </p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>I think we all have rebelliousness and conformity built in. Day in, day out, we tend to do what everyone else does. We go to work, be responsible at home, follow the "rules", do what's right, because for the most part it's easier to just do what's expected and get along. It also works. Others have made the mistakes already so we follow what they have learned, if we choose. I tend to be very opinionated as I'm sure my posts have shown, even with my bosses, rebellious, I suppose. But for the most part I follow the rules and do my job. But every once in a while, I really lose it and and go my own way. I started my own business many years ago because I wanted to do it my way. So starting something daring could have supposedly made me rich and "noticed". It didn't work out that way, but that's how new things get started, with someone's ego. It's also nice to know pretty much what makes me tick. Sometime it's so silly you got to laugh at the seriouness I take some of these things. </p>

<p>Many of us want our pictures noticed, admired. maybe to make a few bucks. How many photographers became pros for the same reason? Probably most. Those who say they don't, I don't believe. We're all human. We all need "atta boys". So we turn the portrait at a 45 degree angle to be different to break the "rules". Maybe it will work. We'll get applause. Probably it will just look crooked. Nobody certainly not me is saying experimentation is wrong. That's how we learn. I wish we could just find a better word than "rule". If I go to a restaurant and they overcook my steak like rawhide, I don't say the chef broke a "rule". It just tastes bad. Similarly with photos. When you do certain things to photos, it doesn't work. It's overcooked and it just looks bad. So you create a "rule" that says, don't let the steak go too long on the fire or a rule that says straiten out the picture - tilting them don't work. But if you want to tilt them, go ahead and learn. </p>