What is the essential difference?

[sreed2006]

Study art. Painting, history, economics.
Photography is just the means of expression. Like choosing oil paint versus stone.
This particular means of expression uses visual language to communicate.
Ergo you must be at least peripherally aware of the last 600 years of art history.
If you are not, you are functionally illiterate - whether you are a sculptress, a painter, or a photographer.

Make a list of your favorite photographers. Dig deep enough and you will find that they studied art, or design at some point.

Build an incredible work ethic. Be a good businessperson.
Don't ever give up.
Ignore bull$hit about peaking early. Or tragic ends. These are all excuses to not begin.

You know, the idea of visually communicating has been a difficult one for me. Quite often, my end goal is to obtain a nice picture, that I enjoy, done technically very well. At the moment I press the shutter, I tend not to be thinking of using that image as a future form of communication. If the picture turns out well, I am happy to share it with others. Perhaps not having the intention to produce a future communication leads to failure. I think I'll work on that aspect and see how it goes. It certainly is an essential difference.

 

[Oscuro]

You know, the idea of visually communicating has been a difficult one for me. Quite often, my end goal is to obtain a nice picture, that I enjoy, done technically very well. At the moment I press the shutter, I tend not to be thinking of using that image as a future form of communication. If the picture turns out well, I am happy to share it with others. Perhaps not having the intention to produce a future communication leads to failure. I think I'll work on that aspect and see how it goes. It certainly is an essential difference.

Remember that "communicate" is broadly applied. It can run the gamut from documentation and, over the course of many photos, a journalistic narrative, to "simply" a feeling. With much in between.

Monsieur O.

 

[sreed2006]

Yours is a question asked every year when I was teaching. There are some answers, but nothing really definitive.

But dedication to the work is always part of the mix. I know a number of very successful (artistically and monetarily) artists, and all of them were unwavering. Even the ones who seem flippant to the public.

Sadly dedication, is however not a guarantee of success, some who are dedicated just make huge quantities of bad work.

The worst is success artistically (beloved by many other artists) and zero financially.

Photomoof,

I know this is an age-old question. I have learned some interesting things in this thread that I can apply - things I had not thought of before.

As for being dedicated and turning out huge quantities of bad work, I am very familiar. Not only when I look at some of my photographs that I thought at the moment of exposure were going to be great, and they turned out so bad they got filed in the circular file, but I have also known artists where I have to ask myself why in the world they keep trying.

Fortunately for me, every once in awhile I get a really nice picture. That's enough to keep me going. I just want to be more consistent.

 

[toyfel]

Am I mistaken in believing a great photographer gets the image that they want? This is exactly where I fall down, and don't know exactly why.

Somehow, most times, what comes out of the camera is not at all what I saw and wanted to capture. This happens often, although once in awhile I do get what I wanted (and sometimes even better than I had hoped). Why it works sometimes and not others is still a mystery to me. I am trying to get past that mystery.

You might consider it a possibility that even "great photographers" had to suffer through a fair share of failures not only when they were beginners but during their entire career. It might help to think the frustration you experience is not different from that of all other photographers. Best to accept it as an invariable part of being a photographer that will never completely disappear no matter how hard you work or how good you are. Besides, if it disappeared then it would only be a sign of stagnation, meaning that you stopped pushing yourself and your art into new territory. It might also help to keep in mind the limitations of the technology we use. Not everything we see can be reproduced with a camera. The human mind and vision are more complex and obviously very different from a camera's way of seeing. No surprise that the cameras end result sometimes doesn't resemble the image we have in our mind. Sometimes there are ways to work around the shortcomings of technology but not always. And sometimes it's only our mind playing tricks on us rather than the camera being incapable of doing the job.

 

[shimokita]

A very interesting topic... my take on this is that in one sense the teacher or mentor of that young lady does a huge disservice by trying to reply to the specifics of her statement... it's the starting point of a deeper questioning, and for the most part it's not even about photography.

The greats are the individuals that can make art out of anything, creativity can be learned... understanding how to be creative is the result of paying attention to the right things while in the process of doing something specific.

"We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words." - John Fowles (The French Lieutenant's Woman)

... It seems the pure creativity of a child gives way to specialization, and something gets lost in this pruning on the road to adolesence and adulthood.

In some people it seems that this pruning is less severe and creativity gets prolonged into adulthood, where I further suspect without use and exercise creativity further atrophies, but this does not have to be the case.

Cal, some very interesting points. One has to ask how much of that is a learned response...

...

 

[Iestrada]

If greatness is the standard then very few of us reach it. Very few photographs reach the standard of greatness for the great photographers as well. Every pictured ever take by the so called "great ones" has not been published or even seen. Their greatness is perhaps at being "great" editors of their work and culling the not so great shots. Even then, many photo books have pictures that do not measure up to the rest for no other reason that they contribute greatly to the story the photographers intends to tell.

Not every picture needs to be great and capture a decisive moment of sorts. But every picture can conform to standards of composition and be good. I work hard at taking good pictures. The harder I work at it the greater the chance of some of them being great. I voraciously continue to learn and improve the technical aspects. Sometimes all the stars line up. It's a good life. 🙂

 

[Carriage]

Apparently Robert Frank took ~28,000 photos and only used 83 for "The Americans".

 

[sreed2006]

Apparently Robert Frank took ~28,000 photos and only used 83 for "The Americans".

I recently was in a friendly game on-line where my friends and I challenged each other to post 7 nature pictures in 7 days. I exhausted my supply of post-worthy photographs just to get to the 7th day, and that archive has about 4 decades worth of pictures.

Several of the others posted fantastic pictures, much more recent, and did so without breaking a sweat. There is a real difference there. I believe I'll write to my friends individually with the same questions I asked at the start of this thread. Maybe they won't have answers, but maybe they will.

 

[Bill Clark]

Boy, do you ask a lot of questions!

My recommendation, get involved. Find a coach/mentor that sees the world as you see it. Use it as a foundation to build your work.

What is a great photograph? To me it happened when the client hired me. They liked the photographs I made during the meeting process. No kudos, no accolades, no flickr or instagram or Facebook. It concluded with a contract stipulating our agreement. My best reward was when the check cleared. Sorry, it was a business first for me.

Unless a person worked for the "art" of it, then they needed backing like Bresson with his family.

Either it's a business or something to play around with because you have a rich somebody or something/someone/day job to pay the bills.

For me, I determined my success from things other than what you ask here.

 

[sreed2006]

Boy, do you ask a lot of questions!

My recommendation, get involved. Find a coach/mentor that sees the world as you see it. Use it as a foundation to build your work.

What is a great photograph? To me it happened when the client hired me. They liked the photographs I made during the meeting process. No kudos, no accolades, no flickr or instagram or Facebook, It was just a contract stipulating our agreement. My best reward was when the check cleared. Sorry, it was a business first for me.

Unless a person worked for the "art" of it, then they needed backing like Bresson with his family.

Either it's a business or something to play around with because you have a rich somebody or something/someone to pay the bills.

For me, I determined my success from things other that what you ask here.

Bill,

I know I ask a lot of questions. Hopefully they're not annoying.

In your photography practice, what was the difference between your work and the work of someone who couldn't make it? Was it strictly your business sense, or a talent that kept customers knocking on the door?

Thanks,
Sid

 

[Carriage]

Have you looked at your uninspiring photos and worked out what you don't like about them and how you could have improved them into something you do like? To get better at something it's more than just doing it a lot, it's doing it a lot with feedback so you can work out how to improve what you're doing as you go.

 

[CK Dexter Haven]

I don't believe 'practice' in quantity is a guaranteed route to excellence in a creative field. Not at all. There are people with Flickr feeds with tens of thousands of photos, and you can look at their first and most recent images and not see development. Repetition may improve your technical proficiencies. But aesthetic sensibilities and (real) creativity are more complex matters.

It also depends on what kinds of photography we are talking about. If you want to be a better Product photographer, a lot of what you can learn technically will advance your results significantly. If you want to be a better Street photographer, I have to imagine a lot of time in the field and time in a compelling location will advance your results.

But in either situation, much of it still comes down to tastes and sensitivities to aesthetics. Some people just won't develop 'taste,' and much of that may be related to environment and exposure. Which isn't to say that someone can't come from 'nowhere' to develop those things. But you have to first recognize what you don't know, don't see, and that you don't have that foundation, and unfortunately there aren't many people who know that they have bad taste. Everyone likes what they like. If you want to be a shoe designer and you go into a room with 100 people in it, if you don't think 97 of em made horrendous choices in their footwear, you probably don't have a discerning enough eye. Same with photography. If you shoot 100 pictures and think more than a few are worth showing or even discussing, you're not on the right track....

Education can get a person to recognize characteristics that make photographs/photographers "great," but then MAKING greatness is still altogether a different matter. Knowledge of rules and techniques can get you into 'competency,' though. And maybe further than that. But, what is greatness? There are singers on American idol thst are technically more proficient than Sade, Madonna, Sinatra, sting, et al. But they don't actually create anything, and often the only character they have is from mimicking someone else. Greatness is more than just the technical.

 

[Carriage]

I think practice does help but the feedback needs to be on the aesthetic/creative part. Sid is saying that he's not liking a lot of his own work and likes that of others. Ostensibly if other people also like his friends' work then he has reasonable enough taste to start improving his creative work.

With your shoe example, maybe they have that thought you suggested but if they're aware they can start learning why and develop a discerning eye.

Also, in any field to be the very best you need both talent and practice. Doesn't matter if it's creative or not. But to be very good talent is less of an issue apart from potentially making things harder.

 

[zauhar]

All you need to be a great artist - in any domain - is the capacity to distinguish what's good from what's bad (apologies to Cocteau).

The advantage of photography is that even a beginner can produce a truly great image. Consistency is of course a separate issue .

 

[Carriage]

Also, think about how you want to define great. To be a widely known name I would think it likely that you'd need all of talent, dedication and a bit of luck. For lesser levels, it may be achievable.

But being well known doesn't necessarily mean your work is great too mind you.

 

[sreed2006]

Also, think about how you want to define great. To be a widely known name I would think it likely that you'd need all of talent, dedication and a bit of luck. For lesser levels, it may be achievable.

But being well known doesn't necessarily mean your work is great too mind you.

I believe the young lady's definition of "great" meant she wanted to be world famous and widely admired.

My definition is much more modest - intentionally achieving excellent photographs on a consistent basis.

 

[Carriage]

Now you need to define excellent and consistent. 😛

It may be better to think of things as "I want to take pictures I really like more often than I already do", which leads you to just keep shooting and analysing your own work. The analysis on what can be improved is important.

 

[sreed2006]

Now you need to define excellent and consistent. 😛

It may be better to think of things as "I want to take pictures I really like more often than I already do", which leads you to just keep shooting and analysing your own work. The analysis on what can be improved is important.

That is good advice. I have avoided analyzing my yucky photographs many times due to the initial disappointment when seeing them as failures, then just rejecting them outright.

Learning from the mistakes is as important as learning from the successes, and provides much more opportunity 🙂.

 

[farlymac]

Greatness, Sid, can only be defined by what others think of you, and your body of work. A photo you think is exactly the way it should be could draw six different reactions from a like number of persons.

I once had a friend who thought that if he got a camera like mine, his photography would improve. So I took him with me one day to show how I took photos, and he improved a bit after that. The funny thing was, I was shooting with a used Nikon FM, and he had a brand new Chinon with all the bells and whistles.

You have to have a passion for it, not just be technically proficient. But understanding when are the best times of day to shoot, matching the film with the scene, and working all the angles for a good composition are important.

Go out, pick a subject, and shoot the living crap out of it. When you think you've exhausted all the variations there are, shoot a little bit more. Then go home, and analyze your photos. Try to remember what you were going for, and what the camera settings were at that time. Write it all down if you have to. Note the direction of the light. Did you take all the photos from the same stance? What is the ratio of landscape to portrait? What time of day was it? Cloudy?

You're not going to automatically be great. It takes a bit of time. I'm pretty sure I don't have enough left to get there, but it won't stop me from trying.

You know, sometimes the difference between a good photo, and a great one, is taking two steps to the right.

PF

 

[Scrambler]

That is good advice. I have avoided analyzing my yucky photographs many times due to the initial disappointment when seeing them as failures, then just rejecting them outright.

Learning from the mistakes is as important as learning from the successes, and provides much more opportunity 🙂.

I have heard it said that you need to ask the question "Why?" at least five times of any situation to truly understand it - the number of course may be arbitrary...

This photo is yucky!

Why?

Nothing is in focus!

Why?

I moved after setting manual focus!

Why?

And so on...

Dig deep, make changes, try again:

This next photo is yucky!

Why?

My subject is lost in a mess of other things!

Why?

It is in the same focal plane and a similar texture to 100 other things!

Why?

Because I didn't frame it tighter! (or use shallower focus, or alter my perspective or...)

Why?

Because I couldn't get any closer because of the Grizzly!

OK... Why didn't you crop it?

And so on again.

Make changes. Repeat.

The point is - understand, change, grow. No understanding, no change, 10,000 bad photos.