Why are some people good at photography while others arent?

Texsport said:
I notice that 3 of the avatars accompanying the responses so far depict left eye dominant photographers.
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How can you tell? If you mean they're using their left eye to look through the the viewfinder, then you might be wrong. You are probably looking a shot done with a mirror. Remember which side of the camera you usually (or always) find the viewfinder.

I'm left eye dominant, but use my right eye with a rangefinder. Heck, I use my right eye to shoot a pistol, rifle and bow, because I'm right-handed and it feels more natural that way.
 
The whole discussion about whether or not good photography is subjective probably misses the point, though. Sure, I might think someone's an awful photographer while they think they're great but in that case it's more of a disagreement in taste. I'll never like HDR picture even if the photographer is very good at doing the HDR photography he/she likes.

However, a lot of photographers have a hard time doing work that they themselves appreciate while some others seem to be quite good at doing exactly what they like.
 
IMO, people are born with different amounts of potential in anything you can think of. Their ultimate ability in each of these aspects/skills depends on what they have done to develop that potential.

Just like some people can run faster than others. Partly nature, partly nurture.
An inexperienced slower runner can improve with training, but can never exceed the physical potential he was born with.

I love music and guitars. I can't sing or play well. My innate potential for performing music, is simply low. I can improve somewhat with practice, but I could never get really good at it. IMO
 
I can't sing or play well.
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That's your opinion. Others may really like what you do. 😀

I don't understand how a personal belief or taste can be conflated with a measurable outcome such as, for example, one person being able to run faster than another. The thing about "good" and "bad" is that they are relative. Carried to the absurd, but unfortunately demonstrable, extreme, we get people who say that their standards of behaviour are good and other peoples' behaviour is bad, which gives the first group the right to kill the second group.

While not quite in the same class as my last statement, this whole thing about "good" photography and "bad" photography is just one example of people confusing personal opinion with measurable outcome. Consider this: would an anonymous picture from any "great" street photographer win a prize in the average camera club competition? Would a technical photograph of of a rat's ovary, part of a Nobel Prize winning research project, be considered a "good" picture by the average RFF member?

I believe that any of the following replies are valid for the last two questions: "yes", "no", "maybe", "what?".
 
Some things are in the genes. I see it in my two daughters. Li a is like me, and she loves photography, while Dana is like my wife, and she likes painting.

I once had several large sized prints in an exhibit, when an old gentleman approached me with this question:" Are you a Mathematician?" I asked him why he thought so, and he told me that he could identify patterns in how I composed my images.

Msybe it is a mix of how we see things and whether we add to it some learned knowledge base on photography.
 
My thoughts on this are that most people can learn the technical aspects of photography (& for those who can not there are the p & s cameras).
Now for someone to be "good at photography", they bring to bare their instinctive use of technical skill, with an intuitive nature of "seeing" a photograph, which enables them to capture the "unique image", that Cartier Bresson refers to as the "decisive-moment".

For the rest of us, IMHO, it's called getting lucky. 😀
 
Look inward ......

Look inward ......

I blame the equipment. Look at the "gearhead" solution to photography. Keep buying camera's looking for the right one, the one that will take "great" pictures.

Now, take all that money and educate yourself in Art. My good friend, who is an excellent photographer says he owes all his great photography success to the years he spent studying Art History, and then teaching it. If that's true, it's meaningful because his photography is excellent, and most of his work he has processed himself.

Imagine how many more art degrees would be hanging on walls if the money spent on photography equipment over the last 4-5 decades went into education in Art.

I do also suscribe to the concept of certain people having more vision than others, or ability to see the good pictures... ie right brain/left brain.

I suspect that any brain can be trained to create good photography, except for the poster who said, and I quote:

"Photography has nothing to do with art. It's a mechanical reproduction like a Xerox machine."

That's making pictures.. That IS NOT photography!!! That attitude will never a photographer make.
 
FrankS said:
I love music and guitars. I can't sing or play well. My innate potential for performing music, is simply low. I can improve somewhat with practice, but I could never get really good at it. IMO
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You might not be born with an absolute pitch but that doesn't mean you can't play an instrument well with practice. Everybody can play an instrument well with enough practice unless you have some physical attributes that prevent you from doing so (like e.g. very short fingers for playing piano). Maybe you will never be great at it but you can surely be really good at it. Same goes for singing actually. Given enough training early in their life, most people could be decent singers (i.e. accurate) at least as far as hitting the notes is concerned. The only problem is that hitting the notes doesn't mean much if your voice isn't nice. But then again, this doesn't seem to keep performers in musicals from doing it. 🙂
 
FrankS said:
I love music and guitars. I can't sing or play well. My innate potential for performing music, is simply low. I can improve somewhat with practice, but I could never get really good at it. IMO
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Then again, a number of great bands and artists (many of them in the indie and punk genres) didn't let low innate musical ability stop them. 😀
 
It is all subject to what is defined as art, what is liked and by whom. I have seen photos in an exhibition that I didn't like or/and understand. Yet they were there and many people gazing with awe at them.
It is all a matter of the group that accepts your artistic point of view. When that group is too small, you might be considered a non-skilled one by the others outside that group. 🙂 Thank God mom is at least always there to say something positive about it 🙂
 
FrankS said:
...
I love music and guitars. I can't sing or play well. My innate potential for performing music, is simply low. I can improve somewhat with practice, but I could never get really good at it. IMO
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Frank, I will bet you never put enough time in to know one way or another. Learning a musical instrument takes an incredible investment of time. People generally don't put in the time because they get discouraged, or because life gets in the way.

According to Malcolm Gladwell's book, it takes 50,000 hours to master anything worth mastering, whether it is a sport or musical instrument. That sounds about right.

That doesn't mean that one person has more innate talent than another - but I think he is right that the 50,000 hours counts a lot more than the aptitude you were born with. Putting in that 50,000 hours is probably more a function of the emotions (obsession?) than anything you could measure with a standardized test.

Since the camera does part of the work, maybe the oft-quoted threshold of 10,000 photos is not far off.

Randy
 
Sure some are born with a creative eye moreso than others but photographic skill needs to be learned. How many of you took photography in high school or picked up a book on photography & became self taught. The decisive moment has a great deal with being at the right place at the right time under the right lighting conditions. In other words practice in photography is a must.
 
Texsport said:
At least they have a desire to be creative.

I notice that 3 of the avatars accompanying the responses so far depict left eye dominant photographers. My avatar would make it 4 if it were a self portrait..

The left eye is controlled by, or controls the more creative right side of the brain.

Texsport
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be the way, eyes and brains a more wired like this (i assume that u meant the perception, and not e.g the control of movements of the eyeball). so not the left eye is connected to the right hemisphere of the brain and vice versa, but the left side of both eyes (with which u see, what is on the right side) is connected to the visual center on the left side and vice versa.

theBrain.gif
 
I don't believe you can learn to be creative. You can plod along and learn to ape real creativity, and you can learn to be technically better, but you can't learn to be an "artist".

I had a girlfriend once who decided she wanted to be a "photographer". She was Japanese, about 24 years old, and had never taken photos other than a few family snapshots.

I got her a Nikon FE (this was around 1995), taught her the basics, and she instantly started taking remarkable photos, some of the best I've seen. From the first roll of film. (FAR better than me)

You cannot learn to have an "eye". If you don't have it, you will never have it.
 
Sejanus.Aelianus said:
I find the question questionable. A better question might be "why do people think that their opinion carries more weight than the opinions of others"?

Your liking sherry doesn't make it a better drink than beer.
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Yep! 😀

Attend an art showing, where the general public allowed. Watch the variety of opinions over a variety of work.
 
I Love Film said:
I don't believe you can learn to be creative. You can plod along and learn to ape real creativity, and you can learn to be technically better, but you can't learn to be an "artist".

I had a girlfriend once who decided she wanted to be a "photographer". ......................................
and she instantly started taking remarkable photos, some of the best I've seen. From the first roll of film. (FAR better than me)
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good post.
I've seen similar stories too, but i disagree that you cant learn to be creative, its about what you feed your eyes and mind.
good photographers come from all personality types, mad artists to conservative intellectuals. 20x12 wet plate guys to t-bone.
I've certainly hope i've learned to be a lot better than i used to be and hope to keep improving.

ITS ABOUT WAYS OF SEEING
If she wanted to be a photographer bad enough there must have been some photos she saw that affected her and made her feel like that. She had probably studied that aesthetic deeply and when you gave her the camera and removed the technical limitations in her way she was able to create her own version of it.
 
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