Photos of Its Not as Easy as It Seems
- #1
Today's cameras are technological wonders. With quick feedback inherent in digital photography anyone can master can be getting correctly exposed, sharp pictures in very little time. It also makes photography more competitive. What's not so easy is subject matter choice, lighting and composition.
One of the things photography instructors warn about is triteness. I've had two university level instructors tell me the tritest photo anyone can take is a close up of a flower. None the less, I see gazillions of them posted in Flickr groups and getting lots of attention in the form of "faves" and comments. I guess it's all the floral photographers patting each other on the back because they aren't getting any help from me.
Let me throw out the definition of snapshot. If you don't like it, treat it as a working definition for this discussion. A snapshot is a photograph of no interest to anyone but the photographer or any persons pictured in it. Looks like all those trite floral closeups aren't covered here. What a mystery.
Do you want your photos to be memorable? MIT did a study and concluded the least memorable photos are landscapes. I don't know why because landscapes shot by Ansel Adams are some of the most memorable photographs around. Should I stop shooting the beautiful alpine scenes in Colorado or the red rocks of the southwest? It's depressing. The most memorable photographs were of people, interiors and familiar objects. There are a lot of stock photographers earning money taking pictures of familiar objects like jellybeans.
Photographs of people are in a special class. The very idea makes some people uncomfortable. I believe a lot of it has to do with varying standards regarding privacy and sexuality. I don't want to go any further in this direction other than to point out that some have a problem with it. There are both religious and political underpinnings. If you are taking a lot of photos of people as I do, you have to both be careful an have a thick skin.
Well, it's a bit of a ramble, but that's what I have on a Monday.
- #5
Photography is just a medium. Like painting. If you have paint and a surface, you can change the color of house, put racing stripes on a Trans Am, make a portrait of some self-important CEO in a suit, illustrate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or construct a semi-abstract, 3-dimensional Anselm Kiefer-like canvas. It's a question of what you're trying to do with the medium. I don't think any of that prescriptive advice can mean anything if it's not addressing your intentions.
I spent a couple of decades photographing urban landscapes, because that was an art project that meant something important to me. Why would I care about MIT research on what's memorable? If only 1% of people are interested in landscapes ... well, that just narrows down my audience.
Also ... what's the point of denigrating a snapshot? Art historians think of snapshots as images that are significant to people who have a particular shared context—like knowing the person depicted, or having been at the event depicted. This is a perfectly honorable use of the medium.
And, you might accidentally make something that's interesting to people outside that small group. Photographs have never been bound by anyone's intentions or expectations. John Szarkowski, photo curator at MoMA from the 60s to the 90s, acquired thousands of snapshots for the museum's collection. In most cases the photographer would have been amazed by this. But it makes sense when you see the images in their new context.
- Thread Starter
- #8
I'm not denigrating snapshots. However, your argument seems odd to me because the images you refer to were interesting to people outside of the definition of a snapshot. As I mentioned, if people are finding the image interesting when it is uploaded to a site like Flickr it falls outside the definition. It it's truly a snapshot, it's forgotten. There had to be something special about the curated images even if those of similar subjects are destined for the dustbin.
Lots of my photos have been called snapshots, but they keep getting faves, comments and views.
@pma that image makes me think of the work of HCB with the lone man encased in an urban landscape.
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- Thread Starter
- #10
Here's a blog with (arguably) 20 most famous photos... Of these, how many of these look like anyone cared about the lighting, composition, or exposure?
There is a saying, f/5.6 and be there. These photographs are great not just because of the subject matter but they were taken by great photographers who were able to get the exposure, composition and lighting right. You may wish to believe these images just happened, that's your choice. The only thing that just happens is a winning lottery ticket or a mistake.
- #19
I won't claim to understand some of his works, and maybe there's nothing to understand:
Daido Moriyama: Near Equal
bennettsublarton1989.blogspot.com
Source: https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/photography-isnt-as-easy-as-it-looks.20215/
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