So I know I’m a little late to this party, but I’m an art student and I think this is a really awesome discussion, so I’m going to go ahead and practice the dread art of thread necromancy and bring this baby back to life.
First, there are a few statements that have been made that I just have to comment on.
…I don’t really know how to say this but you’re…wrong.
Everyone, EVERYONE, edits their photos. I mean yes, camera control is a huge part of it and you do that get that one shot out of every thousand that is just perfect, but editing is a HUGE part of photography, and has been before Photoshop. Especially before PS actually. If you’ve ever shot with film you know that literally 10% of your time is spent shooting and the rest is spent in the darkroom editing and tweaking the print. You really can’t not edit in darkroom, since there is no distinction between it and “just” developing the print. The earliest photography was pretty much entirely editing, as they spent most of their time messing with chemicals trying to get the image to stay. Every professional photographer I’ve talked to (and I’ve talked to a lot, from friends in high school who were wedding/senior photo/pay me and I’ll take you some nice pics photographers, all the way up to my current teachers, who are fine artists whose work hangs in galleries and museums and sells for thousands of dollars) has stressed that. Hell, Ansel Adams is probably the biggest name in photography period, and I’ve seen a pic of a print that was done straight from one of his negatives, with no dodging and burning. It looked like crap.
That being said, ReptiGeek, please don’t take this as an attack or me “blowing up”. Your pics are awesome and you’ve got undeniable skill, I’m just saying there is ALWAYS room for improvement, and using programs like Photoshop (or doing dodging and burning and/or spot toning if you’re shooting with film) is a great way to facilitate that.
On a similar note…
How exactly does making the tools to create art more widely available ruin it? Because the club isn’t exclusive any more? Because you have to learn some new skills to keep up? Sounds like some curmudgeonly Luddite thinking to me. That’s like saying the power drill ruined the screwdriver, or to use an analogy more related to photography, that the light meter ruined squinting at stuff. Photography as a whole is just like that, 200 years ago if you wanted to create an image, you had to spend a few years learning how to paint first. So yeah, I feel like that’s kind of an inherently hypocritical statement for a photographer to make, or anyone who uses tools with moving parts and electricity for that matter. Besides, I feel like most people can tell the difference between some sorority chick’s instragrammed pic of a bunch of Bacardi bottles and say,
The Steerage, anyway.
Again, not trying to offend anyone here. Like I said, I’m an art student and I get passionate about this stuff.
Now, as for the main discussion, I think it is unfortunate that people take popularity and things like that into it, but it’s also kind of inevitable. One of the first things you learn at art school is how important it is to differentiate between the art and the artist. (It takes some legitimate practice to get used to praising something by someone you hate, or trashing your friend’s work.) It really is important though. I mean Picasso put a cigarette out on his wife’s face! That’s horrible! He’s still the most influential artist of the 20th century in many peoples eyes (though not in mine, that would be Duchamp, Duchamp, Duchamp all the way
), and rightly so, he has some amazing work. Braveheart didn’t get any worse when Mel Gibson had his whole anti-Semetic freak out a few years ago, ect.
I’ve basically been thinking of the entries first and foremost in the postmodern sense, like I do with fine art, which is to say as a trigger for an experience, rather then an object (or image, in this case). So following that line of thinking I might say oh this has the nicest composition or that has the nicest light, but if there is some goofy pic that makes me bust out in a belly laugh, I’m probably going to vote for it even if it’s not that technically or aesthetically exciting. And I’m just using humor as an example; there could definitely be one that is just visually beautiful enough to get my deep gears turning, a la Rothko, or some crazy visceral action shot or something.
After looking through and seeing if any fit into that first category and jump out at me, I go back and get a little more analytical, and start looking at them in terms of form and content. That’s definitely much less of a can of worms then it is with fine art, since I think its safe to say that virtually all of the pics that get entered are almost entirely formal, as opposed to conceptual. By that I mean that people’s intention when they create the image is to capture a really nice pic of a cham, rather then to communicate an idea. (That’s a generalization, I’m sure there are exceptions. I know I tried to spice mine up with some conceptual content via the title). A lot of the time I spend looking at fine art is spent investigating how/if the form supports the content, (an obvious example of that would be using a lot of diagonals to add tension to an image), but because there really isn’t all that much content to these images, I can pretty much go right to the form. Now, that being said, the majority of the entries are portraits of an individual chameleon, so there is the possibility for some content there, such as capturing an expression that seems to portray an emotion particularly well (or one that we can project an emotion on to, as the case may be), or having some sort of narrative going on.
Formally, the cham is obviously going to play a huge role, but it’s not a beauty pageant, so that can’t be all. Instead, I like to see how it’s used in the overall composition, and how its forms and colors interact with those of its surroundings. It’s not enough to just have a beautiful cham (all chams are beautiful anyway), I want to see its beauty enhance/be enhanced by its surroundings. Judging by the cham itself is just unfair. Parsons are awesome, but your life has to be in a pretty specific situation to accommodate them, one that most people are not in.
I don’t really take technicality into it much, unless it’s something like some of
giseles recent pics, where its just too impressive to ignore. I do take a good look at colors and black levels, although I have to keep in mind that I’m not viewing it on the screen it was edited on. The only other thing I take off points for is if I go to view full size and it blows up to the size of the galaxy because it wasn’t resized.
So yeah, that’s basically my thinking on it. I know I went a little overboard there, but I like talking about this kind of stuff and I’m on break so I haven’t had a chance to do it in a while. I’m definitely interested to see how the contest turns out, and I really like all the entries, even if they don’t all meet the standards I just described. I do hope it’s not too much of a popularity contest though. It seems like if someone helps you out, you should give them reputation, that’s the express purpose of that feature. Anyway, I hope this doesn’t just get met with crickets chirping, I would really like to continue this discussion.
