A Great photograph...

[Exdsc]

One characteristic of all great and competent photographers is the willingness to shoot a lot.

Alex Webb, shot five or six rolls of K200 in half an hour inside a barber shop and finally got one image from it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip3Nd8iETOc

Most amateurs shoot 20 images every Sunday and expect to be a great photographer.

 

[cz23]

Does it really matter? We are who we are, but anybody can be better than they are now. Greatness is for others to decide. All we have control over is our own next steps.

John

 

[semi-ambivalent]

the camera marketing dept: "the good one is using our Creative Filter Effects"
the software marketing dept: "the good one has subscribed to our plug-ins"
the pessimist: "some people just have it - I could never do that!"
the optimist: "maybe if I go to enough art galleries and put in the 10,000 hours, I can do that one day, too"

the APUGer: "Damn, this is fun!"

s-a

 

[Keith]

One characteristic of all great and competent photographers is the willingness to shoot a lot.

Alex Webb, shot five or six rolls of K200 in half an hour inside a barber shop and finally got one image from it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip3Nd8iETOc

Most amateurs shoot 20 images every Sunday and expect to be a great photographer.

Isn't this a little like sinking a fifty foot putt after a hundred and fifty attempts ... then being slapped on the back for your great putting? 😀

 

[bonatto]

Isn't this a little like sinking a fifty foot putt after a hundred and fifty attempts ... then being slapped on the back for your great putting? 😀

not if you make sure everybody else doesn't see the other 149 tries 😉

 

[daveleo]

Isn't this a little like sinking a fifty foot putt after a hundred and fifty attempts ...
then being slapped on the back for your great putting? 😀

Yeh, and people criticize the amateur for spraying digital shots in the air and
picking one good one to show his friends !
If you're famous, it's "good editing" if you not famous it's "shotgunning for a lucky shot" 😀

 

[StevenJohn]

You don't see all the color mixing on the painter's palette, only the canvas...

 

[airfrogusmc]

not if you make sure everybody else doesn't see the other 149 tries 😉

The secret is to not let anyone see the try's. Editing is as important as photographing. What you choose to show helps define your style and who you are as a photographer. The greats were all very aware of this. Adams said if he got 12 good negatives a year it was a good year. Editing is very important.

 

[Exdsc]

not if you make sure everybody else doesn't see the other 149 tries 😉

Even those 149 that did not make will be the pride and joy of any Sunday shooter.

 

[airfrogusmc]

Yeh, and people criticize the amateur for spraying digital shots in the air and
picking one good one to show his friends !
If you're famous, it's "good editing" if you not famous it's "shotgunning for a lucky shot" 😀

You still have to be selective at what you point the camera at and great photographs have visual elements in them like leading lines, motion or implied motion, texture, form etc and one thing that a great photographer once told me that is so true and has stayed with me all these years:
" In a great photograph, everything in the frame is helping your visual statement and if those elements are not helping that statement then they are hurting that statement. In great photographs things are not just there."

So I would say pray and spray is much different than editing. Editing helps a photographer define a style. It can help him develop bodies of work of images that relate. Help him/her form a personal way of seeing. It also can help give direction and narrow the work and thus cut down on shooting because it can help a photographer become more selective when shooting.

 

[daveleo]

^ I know, and agree. I was just being smarta$$ with my last comment.

 

[airfrogusmc]

^ I know, and agree. I was just being smarta$$ with my last comment.

LoL.... Sorry sometime the written word doesn't fully communicate.

 

[Keith]

Based on my premise Tiger Woods is obviously a great editor ... well at least he was until some of his mistakes got noticed! 😀

 

[airfrogusmc]

Based on my premise Tiger Woods is obviously a great editor ... well at least he was until some of his mistakes got noticed! 😀

LoL one of many things that golf and photograph have that are different is in photograph taking the photograph is just the start. So the act of taking the photograph can be compared to golf but many golfers wish that they could edit like correct some things and then pick only what they want to show after its all over. For photograph all the post part is just as important as getting the image.

 

[Exdsc]

Based on my premise Tiger Woods is obviously a great editor ... well at least he was until some of his mistakes got noticed! 😀

A photo that did not make it to the final cut is not a mistake, a collection of photos that will never make it anywhere is a colossal mistake.

Photography is not cricket, golf, rugby or kangaroo boxing... there are no batting averages and knockout points...

 

[mdarnton]

I could not disagree more.

I totally agree. All my life I have played a game with myself of predicting what people will do next. It started way before I was a teenager, and it has helped me immensely in my photography (and driving). One can see this same thing in the work of all the great news photographers. There are no happy coincidences if you do this and make it work for you.

Trying to make one-to-one comparisons between different arts, music vs photography, is a mistake.

 

[gns]

There is certainly an element of luck in photography. But some people seem to have a lot more luck than others.

 

[thegman]

If HCB didn't find those kind of moments consistently and didn't write about learning to see those moments at great length then you might have a point. But if you saw the exhibit "Henri Cartier-Bresson The Modern Century" which include hundreds of these kinds of accidents you would see that it wasn't accidents. You also got to see his contact sheets and read his thoughts so you got to see that these images were much more than accidents because the visual things he writes about is all in his work. The man knew how to use visual language and to be able to see when all those elements like leading lines, form, repeating shapes, implied motion, etc all came together to make a photograph and he could see it in a fraction of a second.

Then he had the skill to be able to capture what he saw and he did it consistently. When it happens consistently over decades then I would say there is some evidence that it is more than images that were taken accidentally. I mean just look at all the repeating shapes in the man jumping over the puddle.

Yeah some luck of being in the right place at the right time but a lot of that is putting yourself in environments and positions that allows you to become lucky consistently.

I think we are pretty much saying the same thing. I'm not for one second suggesting that HCB's photos were accidents, or anything like accidents. But like you say, you'd have to look at the rest of his work to know that.

Simply by looking at that one photo in a vacuum, would you be able to say HCB was a great photographer? I think we would both agree that the answer is no, and you'd have to look at the rest of his work to decide that.

My point was that if someone makes a 147 break in snooker, they must be an excellent snooker player, as only excellent snooker players can do it. You can't tell if someone is a great photographer simply by looking at a photo, hell, you couldn't really tell if the photographer was even human.

My point was only that defining someone as a good photographer is much more difficult than many other pursuits, where skill levels are absolutes and not a matter of opinion.

I'm certainly not expressing a view on HCB's skill level, only that coming to a view on that is not simple.

 

[benlees]

thegmen, I totally agree with you. Photography has context to deal with, not to mention intent. Conclusions cannot necessarily be drawn from a "masterpiece" photograph- perhaps within a career where context and intention are more easily found. Personal ambition, luck, and curatorial whimsy play a large part in success for both the photographer/artist. Same with the snooker player (ambition, luck). A 147 break in a pub or a world championship indicates a quality player, as determined by the rules of snooker. Art has less rules, I hope.

 

[thegman]

thegmen, I totally agree with you. Photography has context to deal with, not to mention intent. Conclusions cannot necessarily be drawn from a "masterpiece" photograph- perhaps within a career where context and intention are more easily found. Personal ambition, luck, and curatorial whimsy play a large part in success for both the photographer/artist. Same with the snooker player (ambition, luck). A 147 break in a pub or a world championship indicates a quality player, as determined by the rules of snooker. Art has less rules, I hope.

Yes, context is something I had not considered that much. I think Steve McCurry's work is great, but if 'Afghan Girl' was a model in a studio, then I'd have no time for it at all.