david_newton

Thanks Reuben. How much do I owe you? ;-)

The more I think about this the more complex it gets?

Tyler. Whilst I agree that Great can be defined is simply A point, one has to remember that photography as a medium has as many observation perspectives as there are photographs? I?ll explain simplistically. You may look a an image and feel that ?great? is a technical issue; so if I showed you an out of focus shot of my son in front of a warehouse in downtown Dallas where you clearly see a man pointing a rifle the day JFK was shot, you?d might feel it was rubbish. However, Reuben may see it as the greatest image in the world politically and socially?

For me the above answers the original question. If, from YOUR perspective, the image is great then it IS great. All you have to do is find a body of people who agree with you?

Jeff. Sorry, but I don?t agree with your first sentence. History is littered with people who have flown in the face of their peers, current thinking and paradigms and been ostracised (even killed) for daring to be different. Thousands have subsequently have been proven to be 100% right. Part of the make up and drive of such people is a massive self belief which can easily be externally misinterpreted as them believing themselves to be a genius.

Great is indeed a point in time/experience. It is also a matter of context as I allude to above. If you look at something in total isolation it can appear trivial and insubstantial which is why some people feel Adams is so-so and some feel as you do he was far more. I see it a bit like land seed records. In the beginning some complete nutter (read dare devil) got on his wheels and reached the crazy speed of 30mph. People thought your skin would fly off etc etc. Today any half decent cyclist gets up to that speed on his daily commute to work (I wish?)

Our trouble as human beings is that we are very inwardly focussed. Instead of looking at the world in an empathetic light (i.e. seeing it from the perspective of others) we take entrenched and belligerent stand points where everyone else is deemed ?wrong?.

Maybe the message from this thread should be one of ?Look at what others do and are proud of and appreciate it??

David

Interesting thread people.

The original post asked about whether it is wrong to see one's own work as great. For me that single question has two distinct threads. One relates to a definition of 'greatness' and the other relates to an individuals ability to recognise the same.

For me, 'Great' in a photographic sense means that the image stops me in my tracks - time after time... It means I'm drawn like a moth to a flame and want to spend time with this image. It means that every time I see it I 'see' more or it 'means' something else. You get my drift.

Anyone, absolutely anyone, is capable of taking such an image with any kind of equipment in any kind of circumstance. What seems to have happened through the thread though is that 'Great' has become, for want of a better description, greatness which, for me at least, is the ability to identify, isolate and execute 'great' images time after time.

I'll stick my neck out here and say that there are far more people who execute greatness than we recognise. It is only because they haven't been brought to our attention, maybe their work isn't in vogue, by those who dictate such things that they remain unknown.

Back to point two, can we recognise 'great'? Answer is, 'Hell yes!' what we do have to do though is be brave and not let our view of our own work be tempered by what 'Joe Public' is told to think of as Great. We watch and hope and have to hold the faith because, hopefully, one day it will be our turn... My motto, "Publish and be damned..."

David

Just my two penneth.