How should a photograph look?

[antiquark]

Often you can imagine what the picture would look like if some aspect of its composition were changed. I guess you're comparing the actual picture to the one in your "mind's eye," and saying that the imagined one looks better.

 

[Pherdinand]

you know... really talented photog dudes (and dudettes) recognize how it should look without being told the rules.
The rules need to be made and explained/taught to us, mediocre but pretentious, hoi polloi of photogrart making.
If we learn the "rules" reeeally well, there might be once in our life, or twice, an intersection between our path to the great art, and the trajectory of the talented.

 

[shadowfox]

Thanks Roger and everyone else for your replies.

This question is not easy to answer but in my humble opinion (after thinking about it since I posted this question) I feel the question itself has the answer in it. There are no rules as to how a photo should look. Yes, there are certain rules for paintings that was borrowed for photography but even painting has discarded those rules long ago with abstract art.

Everything is permitted as to how a photo should look, there are no rules and its up to the photographer to use this absolute freedom and express their feeling\thoughts.

In fact Robert Frank broke every rule of photography almost 60 years ago with The Americans and still managed to make compelling photographs, and here we're still buying the old nonsense about composition rules, tonality, sharpness and other purely technical matters.

People should just forget everything they know about how photos should look and then go out and look for themselves, at least that's what I plan in doing.

Good thinking, but I disagree with the conclusion.

Instead of forgetting them, you synthesize the things that you learned from photos that *you* have seen and liked into a vision (or visions), and use that vision the next time you have the opportunity to shoot.

This way we don't start from scratch every time, rather, we pro-actively build a repository of 'visions' that we can use when the scene in front of us reveal itself. This is not necessarily the same as "pre-visualization" more like pre-meditated adaptation.

We all do this to some degree, and there is a balance between ignoring it and being obsessed by it. And as with many other aspects of photography, some people get "there" quicker than others.

When the balance is struck, you will be more aware of your situations and be able to react accordingly to create what you call 'compelling' photographs.

 

[Paul Jenkin]

In response to the question posed by the OP:

I reckon photos tend to fall into 2 main categories. The first is record shots where the photo looks very faithful to the scene as it looked when the shutter button was hit (give or take the fact that the photo might be taken in / converted to black and white). Secondly, it will look like the photographer wants it to - e.g. processed / vignetted to how the photographer envisaged the scene. I suppose it's the difference between "taking" a photograph and "making" a photograph.