jonathancharlesphoto

Most people accept that the content of a photo or a music recording is more important

than the technical quality but poor quality reproduction can diminish (or sometimes

"atmospherically" enhance) our appreciation of the scene / performance recorded.

Not much to argue about so far...

So, how good (in technical capability) is good enough?

There are 2 aspects to this: the fidelity of the recording and the ability to make the

recording under a range of conditions.

1) Fidelity. The "gold standard" is comparison with actually being there in the ideal

position. Our eyes+visual processing or ears+auditory processing are far more capable in

terms of dynamic range and spatial awareness than any recording can achieve though

arguably not in absolute resolution. So there is still room to improve and anything but the

best available is, to some extent though maybe not significantly, limiting.

2) Range of possible conditions. Just as portable recorders and improved microphone

technology has extended the options for making music recordings, so a series of camera

developments: plate - rollfilm - 35mm - digital, fixed lens - interchangable - zoom, trial

and error - light meter - TTL - auto-exposure, ground glass screen - rangefinder - TLR -

SLR - autofocus, have made it possible to capture a scene more effectively and quickly.

This has vastly widened the range of subjects and circumstances where photography is

feasable. Newer features continue to help: image stabilisation, weatherproofing,

sophisticated post-processing and others.

Many of these technical improvements, however, have their greatest effect in substituting

for the deficiencies in technical skill of photographers and this is why they are treated with

some suspicion by those who have taken the trouble to master the skills. The automatic

approach often produces the "standard" result and leaves less room for creative selection

of exposure, focus etc.

At the end of the day, it's the resulting picture that counts and how well it reflects the

photographer's intention and is appreciated by the viewer.

Thomas, that's an interesting angle (sorry, no pun intended!) but I think the "edgy" character

needs to be more solidly disturbing than just irritating sloppiness in presentation otherwise

it's just style-without-substance (which, unfortunately, much of contemporary art is).

</i>Several interesting points have been raised in the discussion:<p> - Do you have to

try to be artistic to be a good photographer?<p> - Do you have to know about the classic

"rules" of composition to be a good artist?<p> - Do you have to <u>break</u> the rules

to be a good artist?<p> - Is the most important requirement of a photograph to be

technically perfect, an important subject, a true recording, compositionally correct,

compositionally interesting, personally involved, emotionally engaging, socially relevent,

spiritually uplifting (or all of the above) ?<p>The rather obvious answer is that we all have

our own reasons to make photographs and to look at other people's work. For me "most

of the above" is about right and for JAS "compositionally interesting" and "emotionally

engaging" may be the dominant themes but we can't expect everyone else to share our

own values so we have to put up with seeing "important subject: a flower" and "personally

involved: my cute kids" posted in large numbers, representing the democratic range, as

well as many photos with more "artistic" intentions but varying levels of success.

Hi John. Coming to this thread rather late I realise Tom Foley

has said most of what I was going to say. But I think your

question opens up a wider issue of: "Why are there rules of

composition at all?" - of which tilted horizons and chopped off

bits are examples of what you should try to avoid. It's that

<u>generally</u> they spoil the enjoyment of the picture for at

least a proportion of viewers <u>and</u> they are easily done if

you are not being careful with your framing. Even quite

experienced photographers can, in the heat of the moment, cut

off the subject's feet and then curse themselves afterwards

when they review the shot (I have on occasion had to transplant

the feet from another shot to the one that I otherwise liked best).

That is quite different from deciding that to get the right

emphasis / scale / intimacy / lack of background / etc. it's better

to get in close and lose the peripheral bits. Likewise with tonal

range - it's easy (especially with on-camera flash) to blow out the

foreground highlights and this is a disaster if it's the subject's

face but if it's just an elbow then it may be sacrificed in favour of a

wider tonality for the important elements; it may also be an

intentional compositional device to avoid unwanted detail or give

dramatic effect.<p>So, as Tom implies, careless breaking of the

rules is irritating (especially as most of the problems at the

taking stage can easily be corrected afterwards) but deliberate

breaking of rules is often necessary to get the effect you want.

<p>There's the second issue of the <u>style</u> of photography

we're talking about. In a formal landscape a tilted horizon would

generally ruin the picture whereas for an action shot taken in a

war zone it would be completely acceptable. Your particular style

depends on catching the moment of "spiritual" contact with your

subject (I'm not sure this is quite the right word but I can't think of

a better one) that creates the feeling of self-appreciation and

thus glamour. At this moment all other aspects of the

composition are of secondary importance and have to be left to

intuition and experience to get approximately right. There may be

times when a bit of adjustment afterwards could improve the

details - and I'm sometimes tempted to point them out! - but

usually they are rather trivial and anyway too much correctness

could actually spoil the spontaneous character of the shot.<p>So

... the bottom line is IMHO: <i>don't worry about it.</i> I suspect

that many of the nit pickers really just want an excuse to spend a

bit longer looking at your pics while they are writing about the

"faults". <p>Best wishes, Jonathan

Lukia, you have made an excellent start by joining p.net. There

are a lot of serious art-photographers here and in my experience

the level of informed criticism is the best of any of the large

on-line galleries. The problem is to attract the interested critics

to your work - the best way is to make thoughtful comments on

photos you like which will often attract the photographers back to

look at your stuff and return the favour of spending the time to

write a critique. This can lead to a series of exchanges from

which you can learn a lot. Just don't worry about ratings , which

IMHO are pretty random.

Best wishes, Jonathan