What's the best ...?

George Bonanno said:
I agree with Ira... "Shoot shoot shoot".

Keep in mind photography is a craft... not an art. If one gets into the mindset "photography is art"... then you are doomed.

Best,
George
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I beg to disagree. Using a camera is - arguably - a craft (at the very narrowest definition), if one chooses to understand it simply as a matter of skill - a knack - and takes care not to insert film or look through the viewfinder. But any photograph possessing any meaning or significance whatsoever is necessarily a work of art: : "the expression or application of creative skill and imagination" (OED).

Cheers, Ian
 
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George Bonanno said:
I agree with Ira... "Shoot shoot shoot".

Keep in mind photography is a craft... not an art. If one gets into the mindset "photography is art"... then you are doomed.

Best,
George
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George - that's a big statement! Could you say more? Why craft? Why doomed?

Best wishes
 
George Bonanno said:
I agree with Ira... "Shoot shoot shoot".

Keep in mind photography is a craft... not an art. If one gets into the mindset "photography is art"... then you are doomed.

Best,
George
Click to expand...

Sorry I cant agree with that, the technical side; the selection of the gear, taking, developing, and printing I can see would be improved with practise, so could be considered a craft, but I’m not sure the choice of subject, framing, and editing could be anything other than an art
 
My two cents is that there is no 'best' in anyting. The way you become a better photog is by improving the way you take photos. So if you like compositions then as written in all the very nice responses here shoot more and study the masters. If you want to find new way of creativity and subjects then go where you've never been before etc... All in all to become a better photog takes time as photography is a higly empirical art.
 
I believe photography is both craft and art; there being a huge difference in the balance of these two 'things' in different forms of photography. Photojournalism...advertising......street.....landscapes....industrial. Think about it. They are very different in this regard. Some alt processes to me are almost exclusively craft as I see a decreasing artistic component the more people get wrapped up in huge formats and obscure contact printing techniques. Some forms of photography are very conceptual and have almost no craft in them.

I believe in classes in so far as I believe in learning techniques which help release your expression; whether these be darkroom techniques to enable a negative to be printed the way you feel it ought to be or simply to learn how to use equipment. Philisophical classes may also prove fertile in order to remove the obstacles to self-expression. I do believe however that a lot of classes revolve around imitation and pupils actively seek to become better imitators. I also believe that a lot of instructors and so called 'experts' stifle creativity and are full of it! Most famous artists/photogs would be shot to pieces by many instructors who have a generic multi-point 'good photo' template etched into their minds. The same comment applies to some clubs, where a couple of veterans dictate how things should done and you either learn from them or leave.

I had a dark year when I tried too hard. I then stopped giving sh!t and my photography improved. I should add that when I speak of originality I am not talking about fadish work. I think there is huge scope in doing things done before (its hard not to) but with your own insight and your own spin. I cannot see street work ever becoming overdone as societies change. I cannot imagine landscape work ever dying as it too changes along with our relationship with it. If you can speak to people thru your work through a tired genre I would say that the success is even greater.

I think there is a good argument for an element of isolation when it comes to improving your work, once you are confident you have decent basic skills. I have maintained for a long time that I will never enter a photography competition as I do not feel that success or failure tells me whether I am growing or not. Great art or photography is not the same as nice wallpaper. Most people will never connect with it!

I am curious but unfazed by what people think. If I did get too concerned, I would undoubtedlty be a more frustrated, worse (in my eyes) photographer than I am at present. Frustration and disappointment at not recieveing praise in a club/class assignment or a competition is all too likely to lead to one identifying only the means to produce work that pleases the judges.

I like to sell prints once in a while. I could not give a toss if 100 people walk past a print I love and look blank. Its the one person who ignores every other print on the wall and lis captivated by the one the other 100 have ignored is the one who matters. That one person is the reflection of me, an individual. I don't expect everyone to be just like me, so I should not expect them all to like my work. I am sure that the more widely appealing your work is, the less time each person spends looking......there is a balance I am sure.

Practice, yes, sort of. But I would take it further and say 'do what you want and lots of it regularly'. If you are going out practicing there are already a whole load of preconceptions in your head, "today I will practice..."
 
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Be true to yourself - develop your own personal vision over a period of time and don't compromise.
Buy the equipment that works for you and spend as much time as you can observing the world around you and decide what it is you want to communicate with your photographs - the rest i think is simply time and experience.

To be able to connect with a wider public and develop a professional reputation can depend a lot on who you meet in life and at what point. A good agent/gallery can make all the difference but you have to have the personal vision and a strong body of work from which an agent or gallery can begin to promote you.
 
Lots of good advice. Here's a practical one:

After you click the shutter, take a few more. Kneel down, move closer, farther, move around the subject. You may be surprised.

If you look at your contact prints and you find you are just taking one shot snaps of each subject, you are probably missing a lot.
 
For me, it's to learn the technical stuff first. Then learning the look/style I like best and practice, practice, practice.

As mentioned in this thread, it's being true to yourself.

Also, shoot pics that please you and not others - if they don't like your stuff, it's their problem and not yours. Of course, things may be different if you're shooting for a client. But see, how else will a person develop a personal style if he/she goes on pleasing other people?
 
Thanks. Donald, for such a thought provoking thread.

I tend to think of photography as a blend of art and craft. The operation of the camera, processing of the film and production of the final print are all within the category of crafts. The finished photograph may be considered art. I feel the same way about music, playing an instrument is a craft that can be learned, what comes out may be considered art.

In both cases, photography and music, whether the end result is art is a decision for the audience not the artist.
 
Actually, I think "art" and "craft" are synonyms. One could argue that prior to the industrial revolution, no-one saw a difference. After that, we have a false division between high culture (art) and low culture (craft). Photography so obviously straddles both that it played a significant part in the ultimately unsuccessful 19th century attempt to resolve this miss-perception. The wonderful thing is that successful photography actually demands we ignore such distinctions. The realised photographer is back with Durer, Cellini and Michelangelo in a union of spirit, hand and eye: a wholeness which is really quite rare in contemporary western culture.

Cheers, Ian
 
What I've been doing is browsing the RFF Galleries and Flickr then going out and trying to duplicate particular photos that I like. Of course, with photography, you can't really duplicate a shot but I try to get the same type of composition and, more importantly, the feel of the photograph. Its somewhat like a beginning musician playing covers I guess. I'm hoping that eventually I will stop emulating and start creating photographs on my own.

In addition, I've been reading anything I can get my hands about photography techniques and also looking at photographs done by great photographers.
 
I remembered this thread when I saw Rich's video, 94114.

I guess to be a good photographer, you need not only a good eye, but you need to shoot with your heart. Your photos need to be about something, to mean something, and convey something to the viewer. It's not just shooting random photos. It's definitely not about how well the photo showcases your lens' fingerprint. It's about what is in the photo.

Sometimes we all lose track of this, in all this gear lust. Thanks, Rich.
 
How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?

A young person, holding a violin case, stops a passing cab in New York city and asks the driver, ‘Can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall.’

The cabbie, without hesitation, quips, ‘Yea, practice.’
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Some philosophical discussion invited...

Some philosophical discussion invited...

As I interrupted the invitation it was to give an unemotional response.

A big statement... it was not ! It was a personal, practical suggestion on my part.

So, ya want to be an artist. Start with a blank canvas and paint. Start with a block of granite and chip away.

The closest photo images I ever viewed as being art were Rayographs by Man Ray. And they were intended to weaken the photographic character of photographs.


With photography, you, your camera and film are just recording (stealing) reflected light from two and three dimensional objects. Nothing more and a lot less.

Best,
George
 
George Bonanno said:
With photography, you, your camera and film are just recording (stealing) reflected light from two and three dimensional objects. Nothing more and a lot less.
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So, George, are you saying photography is not art and has never been?
 
OK everyone - I want to ask more questions. We all know a "good" photograph when we see one.

What is a "good" photograph?

Why are we unable to take one every time we release the shutter when we seem to know the rules?
 
I agree with Ian. The pleasure and frustration of photography (indeed of being human) is one's success or otherwise in sharing a vision. A great photograph connects people.
 
An aside on the craft vs art question.

Everyone seems to agree on that photography is a craft (lets leave vague for the moment the precise meaning of 'craft'). But not everyone agrees on that photography is an art. The reason for this divergence of opinion seems to me to be that (a) some craft is not art, and, (b) all art is some sort of craft. As a result, it seems that art is a subset of crafts. Where by the term 'craft' one usually means 'an activity that involves skill in making things by hand' (I 've just checked my Oxford Dictionary, that's what it says) - and where one can be sufficiently relaxed about the precise reference of the term 'things' and the requirement that these things are made precisely and exclusively by hand. More controversially, by 'art' I understand that sort of craft which is designated as such, first by some sort of consensus on the part of the (artistic) authorities and the public, and then by a historical accident or precedent.

All photography is craft. Some (a little) of it is also art. The crucial step is that someone (not just the photographer) is willing to designate it as art and (perhaps even more crucially) that someone is willing to give it public exposure as such. The more a particular exhibit generates 'artistic' interest, the more it acquires the status of one.
 
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