what makes an image 'good'?

Impact. That's what does it for me. I don't care if it's technically perfect, or what camera/lens was used, or indeed whether it's colour or monotone. If it's got impact, it's worked. The image can be still life through to extreme action or environment. Impact will hold my attention, and that's the key for me in a "good" image, holding my attention.
 
peterm1 said:
"So I'm curious Peter, what about Crewdson hits you so wrong that you singled him out as the example of "not good" in a thread about good photography?"

It is hard to say why I do not much appreciate his work. (And by the way I am just using him as an example that sprang to mind - I am sure that there are others too but he is so well known I can cite him and be confident that others will know what and who I am speaking about). I think Crewdson worked in film and it certainly shows in his work which has a kind of cinematically staged look about it. I think that this is part of the problem for me - knowing that in fact it is wholly staged, not real in the sense that it was taken from life. This makes it artificial and therefore lacking somehow. Shots like this remind me of the old joke - success is all about sincerity - once you can fake this you have it made. In this case it is not sincerity its about being able to get away with something artificial so long as it does not look and feel artificial (although I am sure he might say he wants it to look and feel artificial as that is his intention, its part of his "thing"- but sadly that is not enough for me).

He carefully sets his images up and takes them - in fact his role is more of a Director than a photographer and I believe these days he does not even take the image - that is done for him once he has directed the staging. In principle I do not object to that if it can be -pulled off but to me it has the kind of quality that far far too many Hollywood films have - big, expensive, highly produced and directed, technically brilliant but contrived and lacking soul or interest. I can admire his technical skill but there is nothing in any of his images that grab my eyeballs or more importantly, my heart for that matter.

To me a good image is often like poetry - you will be more likely to enjoy it if you can relate to it from your own life or have to invest yourself in interpreting it from your own life. And it must evoke a pleasurable emotion - nostaligia perhaps. Crewdson's work just does not speak to me on an emotional level in that way. I get that it works for others and that he is a big name. So who am I to say this? I am not even saying it to be critical of him, more as an expression of my own befuddlement I suppose over the same question that you have asked me - I have the same question about why I don't like him and others do, except its from the opposite perspective from you.

BTW on the subject of the role of nostalgia in making good images - watch this WONDERFUL WONDERFUL WONDERFUL clip from the series Mad Men in which Don Draper has to sell a pitch to the people of Eastman Kodak. It makes me blubby every time I see it. (The photos he shows incidentally, are of his own family and the wife with whom he has recently broken up so the pain "from an old wound " he speaks of is his own -blub,blub,blub. And while none of his images seem particularly good to me, to him they are obviously very, very wonderful images. That's how personal this issue of "good" images can be - and its why it can be so elusive to answer).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus
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Thanks for the Mad Men clip Peter. I have 2 Carousel projectors on my project shelf, and 2 in a device. I got the chills when that image flashed. Too cool.

For me, most of Crewdson's work elicits that shock-at-the-familiar-while-immersed-in-the-alien feeling that I saw while watching joyous moments this character's failed family. OF course, I was around when the slide was king, so the nostalgia was easy. I can very much appreciate that Crewdson's work does not trigger that for you. As the dude in the clip said, "It's risky."
 
peterm1 said:
Funny. But true. When I look at the photos on Flickr that are most popular they often seem to me to be trite rubbish if not all cuddly kittens.

But they evoke emotions in the ordinary man (and woman) so to them they are "good" photos. But the lots of cuddly kitten hypothesis underlines the deeper answer to the question of what constitutes a good photo. And that deeper answer is that a good photo is one that is emotionally appealing to those looking at it.
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You can never go wrong with cats. Cats really are that awesome.

10626440_10203769488534274_2932576647702971251_o.jpg
 
PKR said:
There are some local "camera clubs".. not photography clubs. I've never been to one, but I bet it's more cameras than photography at most of them.
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The camera club where I live is not so gear-oriented, but the club's meeting revolve around photo competitions in which VERY narrow ideas about composition 'rules' are rigidly enforced.

When I was in college, the photo professor would take his classes to a couple of the camera club's meetings a year so we could listen to the club members critique each others photos...because he thought they were fools with no artistic sense! They never knew why the university's photo classes came, at least not the REAL reason!
 
Very interesting thread. Vintage RFF. Some wonderful contributions. I've seen some stunning images posted in the Gallery, maybe less in the last year or so. The point about the thumbnail impact in the Gallery is very much to the point. Just like competitions, even the format of the RFF Gallery will subtly influence what you submit, and in turn even what you shoot.

I read (somewhere, of course) that you should look and learn and then ignore every lesson and rule and shoot exactly what you want in the way you want. This produces a particular type of photograph. If you see this as valid you then notice it in the work of others.

I would recommend Joe that your look again at Szarkowski's The Photographer's Eye and Looking at Photographs. In the former there is a chapter, The Thing Itself. That idea is something that struck me, literally, and has stayed with me and I think is what underpins my earlier point. I often go back to looking at Paul Strand. Those shadows on the verandah. Or Lartigue, and especially, Atget, strange as that might seem at first.

One of my mentors whom I respect deeply says a good photograph is about emotion. I think about some of the photographs I allude to above and I have a different feeling, in my chest, not quite palpitations, but close to that: a physical correlate of delight and something more important than that.
 
Richard G said:
... I would recommend Joe that your look again at Szarkowski's The Photographer's Eye and Looking at Photographs....
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Always good advice.

My standard prescription for creative malaise is Bill Jay's "Negative/Positive: A Philosophy of Photography." An inspiring treatise on finding meaning in photography (and life).

John
 
ReeRay said:
Impact. That's what does it for me. I don't care if it's technically perfect, or what camera/lens was used, or indeed whether it's colour or monotone. If it's got impact, it's worked. The image can be still life through to extreme action or environment. Impact will hold my attention, and that's the key for me in a "good" image, holding my attention.
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That's the thing though, what is it on the image that impacts you and IMO it is very subjective.
Like you, whether it is a street, landscape, portrait, color or monotone there is a certain IT factor that makes me like the image and it's based on what I like and think it makes it a great image.

Also as we live in a world inundated with shared photos in social media all the time, I've become picky on what image I really like.
 
Images that bring something up, often emotional in nature, from a deeper source then the everyday crowded, busy consciousness in the viewer. Symbols in the image, or what can be interpreted as symbols, can "push buttons" and trigger, or bring up an emotion or issue, either pleasant (my favorite kind) or not. When the emotion or issue is poignant and common enough in the human experience, that photo is memorable. Maybe good, too. Ok, that's my Jungian interpretation of a good image.
 
Chris101 said:
Thanks for the Mad Men clip Peter. I have 2 Carousel projectors on my project shelf, and 2 in a device. I got the chills when that image flashed. Too cool.

For me, most of Crewdson's work elicits that shock-at-the-familiar-while-immersed-in-the-alien feeling that I saw while watching joyous moments this character's failed family. OF course, I was around when the slide was king, so the nostalgia was easy. I can very much appreciate that Crewdson's work does not trigger that for you. As the dude in the clip said, "It's risky."
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Chris, thanks I am glad the Mad Men clip resonated with you.

For me the sounds in the video were what gave me chills - the click/clack of the slide projector as slides changed, the slight clatter and whir of the projector's cooling fan, Don's gentle narrative and the beautiful background music. WOW. The projector's sounds were the sounds of my childhood and countless family gatherings.

For Marcel Proust it was the smell of madeleine cookies that evoked the past. For me it was the sound of a slide projector in a clip from a TV series that brought nostalgia on. (I think this is why this particular clip works so well - the clip is about nostalgia, families and loved ones, the past, things lost etc and for those who remember slide projectors from way back then, the whole clip itself is the embodiment of nostalgia - it manages to actually evoke nostalgia for exactly these things for people who have experienced it. So this scene works on at least two levels . There are few TV dramas that manage to pull off serious adult moments like this.)

And of course as I was saying good photos can do the same. Its what I am constantly striving for and why I like images that are a little ambiguous as they allow room for us to insert our own experience and interpret the image in ways that speak to us.
 
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