Digital Photography Competition - September 2009 Results

@Johnbaker: I don’t think you’re in the wrong here John, on the point of principle (everyone is entitled to express an opinion, no matter how negative) but it does genuinely surprise me when people make posts such as yours without any obvious effort to be…..diplomatic. The blunt nature of your approach is naturally going to attract criticism, and people will (perhaps wrongly) characterise it as an embittered rant, rather than pay attention to the sentiment or content BEHIND the language. If I can offer you a free tip: knock the corners off the way you speak to people if you’re interested in debating the issues rather than your attitude.

I’m assuming you’re cool with a bit of unsolicited advice, since otherwise you’d be a hypocrite ;) Oh and for the record – and I don’t mean this personally – but it is somewhat cowardly to post on one account and submit entries to competitions on another. People would find your harsh critique easier to swallow if you appeared game to accept some yourself.

On the subject of photography itself, I am often sympathetic to some of the critique you post, if not the way you post it. That said, as a photographer, I do question your empirical approach to photography as a visual art.

Your rules about composition are the product of rules about aesthetics. Well I’m afraid art isn’t necessarily about aesthetics. A lot of modern photography is stagnant, and your analytic approach to critique is acutely indicative of this. Photography is taught like a science, and adhered to like an engineering discipline. Creativity should not be corseted by hard and fast rules, nor should a visual artist only ever strive to create things which are “pretty.” I saw a shoot for a big glossy fashion mag recently, by top photographers working with top models, MUAs and stylists, shot entirely with direct flash on a compact camera. The light was harsh and unflattering, the shadows were pitch black, and the background was dimly underexposed. The shots were “ugly.” The photographers however, new precisely what they were doing.

I don’t know how long you’ve been a photographer John, but there will come a day when you realise the “perfect” photograph as you seem to define it, is simply a function of time, effort and attention to detail. Even if you never take it, you realise you CAN take it, with the right application of the aforementioned. In fact, ANYONE can take it if they just follow the rules, and know their way around a camera. But there’s nothing of you in it. It’s like writing the perfect pop song. The perfect pop song has been written thousands of times, and sure, it’s enjoyable in a throw away sort of way. But it isn’t….important, not any more.

Now, I’m not really trying to claim that “mistakes” you’ve spotted with the winning entries are the result of a professional intentionally bending the rules to break new ground. Chances are, the people who took them would rather they didn’t have the flaws you allude to, and if they’d had more time to compose the shot, or more experience with the camera, they might have mitigated them. Rather, I’m just pointing out the flaws in such a dogmatic approach to an art. Perhaps if new photographers weren’t taught any rules they had to stick to, they might produce something truly creative, something those that HAVE been burdened with a set of guidelines they can no longer see beyond, are incapable of envisaging.

On a couple of technical issues though: I question your assertions about exposure in the second picture. Pictures aren’t always about faces being correctly exposed. The dress in the foreground is exposed just fine, and the sky is pretty much blown in the background. The exposure is correct over the frame. Camera sensors have limited dynamic range. It would be impossible to expose that woman’s face correct, especially given her skin tone, and maintain a decent exposure over the rest of the shot. In fact, you would almost certainly be calling it overposed if the shooter had done this. Finally, I disagree about the clutter in the final shot. I am a musician, and I gig on stage regularly. Stages are cluttered and messy; this is the nature of live music. Taking the context away would spoil the shot completely. If you want to take a perfect shot of a guy playing sax, do it in a studio. If you want a shot of a gig, then don’t try and take away everything which makes it uniquely a gig. The alternative shot you advocate, would be sterile.

An eloquent response, Simon, which raises a couple of points. First, your understanding of exposure seems thorough, but you neglected to observe that a little levels or curves adjustment can alter the gamma/dynamic range dictated by the camera's sensor. While it may be "impossible to expose correctly", using today's technology, a litte elementary photoshopping is all that's required to lift those shadows before noise starts to creep in. I'm guessing you've shot film most of your life, without much darkroom experience, and are shocked by the possibility of post-processing.

Second, I too am a musician, a jazz musician in fact, so I'm more than familiar with not only famous jazz shots, but also the types of images that make it onto publicity material, CD covers, posters, programmes, artists' websites etc. Are you saying, on the record, that the sax player image is good enough to merit publication through the above channels? I have a feeling you've gone one step too far in defending the indefensible. Sure, sterility is to be avoided, but the pic in question suffers from the most careless composition. Yes, I'd expect to see mics, stands, leads, drums kits, other players etc, but that's really no excuse for the ghastly distractions exhibited in that image. It really is beyond the pale as far as I'm concerned.

I don't believe I've employed an empirical approach to photography, and I don't recall promoting any particular rules or formulae. I hope I'm not so naive to promote such nonsense, and equally I hope other posters won't be so naive as to say 'well, photography is subjective so there's no such thing as a bad picture'. I have just casually listed some of the striking features that I believe detract from most of the 'winning' images over recent months. One day Cliff will pick a decent image, and then I'll say good things about it.

Funnily enough, I've only ever shot digital and am very experienced with photoshop! I took your criticism as an explicit commentary on the shooter's camera handling and neglected to consider you could also be referring to proposed adjustments to be made in PP. Not everyone has access to photoshop, but there are free equivalents out there I suppose. Genuinely the face doesn't bother me so much. I don't love the picture though, and it's not something i'd shoot.

I'm not suggesting the sax-player image is good enough for publication, no. But publicity images are judged by a specific set of criteria. They are not judged as “art.” They are required to be as aesthetically perfect as possible. Part of the reason you don't expect to see “ghastly distractions” in shots like this, is because you've been exposed to shots without them (in precisely the realm of publishing you make reference to here) for most of your life. The media industry has decided, over a period of decades, that images of recording artists on stage should be as clean/idealised as possible. This is probably because someone somewhere discovered it sells more albums/tickets.

So, when someone sets out to take a shot of a musician on stage, immediately the stereotype springs to mind. The same thing happens to us when we look at such images. Thus, there is a tendency to dismiss them out of hand if they're not following the basic rules a shot of a gigging sax player is supposed to follow. People most often react negatively when their expectations are violated. To a degree, that's what's happening here. If you de-construct any image, start to ask yourself WHY i'm reacting badly to a mic stand carving the sax player's arm in half, you start to realise that rules are a function purely of expectation. And expectation is partly (hugely) informed by experience. This is a self-defeating effect when it comes to innovation; those of us who strive to be creative, are both blessed and cursed by our exposure to other forms creativity. Actually, that's not completely true. What we're cursed by is the modern concept of the mainstream. The fact that some forms of art are used commercially, normalises our expectations. It cements us into our respective comfort zones and makes anything even slightly abnormal or abstract seem grossly “wrong.”

I think “bad” is a highly context-sensitive term. In commercial photography, a bad photograph is easy to distinguish. Indeed, it is characterised by objective measurements. In art though, it's an entirely subject term. I am certainly saying that there is no such thing as an objectively “bad” photograph in an artistic sense. There are certainly “ugly” photographs. Again, these are easy to define objectively. In the commercial world, “ugly” and “bad” are synonymous. In art though, “prettyness” is not the only criterion by which images are judged. I gave an example of an “ugly” high fashion shoot in my last posting. I'm damn sure if there had been a relevant competition on here, and those photographs had been entered, they wouldn't have reached the final 15. And if they had, it would have incited serious upset.