How open-minded are you as "the viewer" ?

daveleo

daveleo

what?
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The question here is .... how "liberal" are you .... or how wide is your field-of-view. Do you mentally demand razor sharpness, edge-to-edge? Perfect, balanced geometry? Bokeh? Radiant glow? Dynamics on the street? Do you favor images with a certain "feel", or do you go where that new image wants to take you?

Looking at yourself as the viewer of someone else's work (NOT what you want to produce), how big is the box of your opinion.

I'll go first, I suppose ..... I think that I am very liberal in this regard. For sure there are a few styles (genres ?) that I will never "get", but I enjoy a wide field of stuff. And more and more every year - probably as I learn more about the various "artistic niches" that pictures occupy.
 
Depends on which day you catch me.

Sometimes I'm as open as the prairie, other times my "box of opinion" is a little smaller than a sugar cube.
 
hi, perhaps it depends on which subject are you looking at, if a photog is at war how could i ask him perfect symmetry?
If the same photog is depicting soem kind of architecture perhaps a moving subject won´t do at all.

:)
 
I'm in the camp that little matters but whether I find the image interesting. "Interesting" can run the gamut from subject to composition to textures to being "interesting" solely on the basis of color or lack thereof. Bokeh, focus, etc. can add or detract from being "interesting" depending on how they're used.
 
hepcat said:
I'm in the camp that little matters but whether I find the image interesting. "Interesting" can run the gamut from subject to composition to textures to being "interesting" solely on the basis of color or lack thereof. Bokeh, focus, etc. can add or detract from being "interesting" depending on how they're used.
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Quite. I'd go so far as to say that I found the original question all but meaningless.

Cheers,.

R.
 
I try to look at photographs with an open mind. There are a few that I don't spend much time with. These few include overdone HDR and a few other effects I am not fond of. There are also a few photographs that interest me at all. I admit my open mindedness is influenced by these factors.

Mike
 
In photography, what's possible is really wide... I enjoy from interesting to surprising to good to art... If I went away with it, as Warhol said, maybe there was some art there, apart from craft...
Cheers,
Juan
 
Sharpness is a last thing I care for. Winogrand put it right for me.
Picture should have drama. If it is in the picture, I like it.
But I prefer it b/w and film :)
 
Roger Hicks said:
Quite. I'd go so far as to say that I found the original question all but meaningless.

Cheers,.

R.
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I'm getting more than a little tired of people who come on here to say what a pointless or stupid or repetitive question has been asked or subject raised. If that's the way you feel, don't waste your time commenting. Leave the thread to those who do consider it worthy of comment and start your own thread on a subject that you find appropriate.
 
I can fully admire people whose style I will never adapt myself, because I cannot think in the way they think.

But I can't tolerate images where the main object is even so slightly out of focus, if not for artistic purposes. IMO at least something should be sharp...
 
I'd say I'm open-minded when it comes to style. Fairly open-minded when it comes to subject matter, except for people being hurt as an artistic subject. I can take it to some degree as a documentary.

On technical issues, only a few subjects require a high degree of sharpness, focus, dynamic range etc. If a photo grabs me, then those issues either don't matter or they add to the photo.
 
I do not know enough to be discerning in any of the areas you mention Dave. So I am left with what looks good, what makes me feel good, what I wish I had done and what takes my breath away. Then, occasionally, what shows some original thought on the part of the shooter.
 
Do I like it? Does it grab my interest, and make me stop and think? These are the only sorts of things that matter to me. The more I look at photographs, the less I care about technical things, and the more I care about the end result.
 
Pretty much, if I haven't seen it before (in general) then I'm down with it. Very little I don't like. But I always want context, and if I can create that, I will remember it.
 
I try to be as open-minded as I can be, consistent with my brains not falling out.

If I don't "get" it then I'll generally assume there's something I'm missing, and look for that something. If I still don't find it, I'll probably move along assuming the fault is with me, unless I find the photo interesting in some way I can't explain. In the latter case I'll probably spend a deal more time looking in the hope of finding (while knowing I won't always find anything).

I'll also keep looking if others find some value to a photo that I just can't see myself. If I can find what others see, even if the photo still isn't to my taste, then that's good enough. If I can't find something even then I might assume I'm at fault for not seeing what others do or I might invoke the "brains not falling out" clause above. As to which is which, well, that depends on many things.

...Mike
 
I'm pretty open minded with the things I like. ;) With the stuff I don't like, I try to remember that I don't know everything and may be missing something that I'll discover later. I'm old enough to know that sometimes, I just need more time to figure things out.
 
Fairly open, unless there is nothing else to see than an dominant effect. Like a b&w with hardly any grey in it, or overdone hdr. On the other hand I'm rather fast in making my mind up if something is worth a second glance. It catches me or it doesn't. And if it doesn't I won't look again at it.
 
sailor said:
I'm getting more than a little tired of people who come on here to say what a pointless or stupid or repetitive question has been asked or subject raised. If that's the way you feel, don't waste your time commenting. Leave the thread to those who do consider it worthy of comment and start your own thread on a subject that you find appropriate.
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Read my reply in the context of the post to which I was replying. Saying that a question is all but meaningless is an encouragement to those who post questions to refine them, rephrase them, rethink them. Echoing a response is an endorsement of that response, perhaps (with any luck) with a little embroidery.

Besides, stop and think for a minute. If you don't like my answer, why waste your time (if you want to see it that way) by saying that I am wasting my time (if you want to see it that way)? If that's the way you feel, don't waste your time commenting.

Cheers,

R.
 
If you want to experience anything new, don't you need to be open?

and doesn't that go just as much for your own pictures as well as others'?

Or maybe, the stronger your preconceptions are, the less likely you are to discover anything.
 
I'll elaborate a bit.
When I first "got into" photography and art, I was pretty judgemental and opinionated as a viewer.
As time went by and I made my own pictures and listened to viewer reactions ("misunderstanding" what they were looking at - in that it wasn't what I saw in my picture !) my mind opened up (as a viewer). I stopped thinking "Does this picture fit in my brainspace?" and started thinking "Where is this guy taking me with this picture?" That slow change, over time, has really made my photo world larger.
I do envy you guys who started off with a good education in the arts.
 
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