What does it take to be great? Advice for an Amateur

[TH3D4RKKN1GH7]

Moving images demand a much lower image quality to suit the viewer; it's much easier to pick out flaws in a stationary image and therefore your error latitude is much smaller in photo. You can approach it the same way, as long as you eliminate any tolerance for quality hits, issues with light, noise, blur, and compositional flaws. I've done a lot of both and it's more difficult to produce exceptional stills because the standards and scrutiny are much, much higher. On the other hand, you don't also need to worry about audio and the other countless minutiae of video.

Very very true.

 

[HBOC]

I think a lot of this has to do with your God given talent. Natural abilities. As stupid as that may sound, it is true.

It is much like sports, or graphic design, web design, etc. Sure, you will need to learn the technical terms, and understand how everything works, but you cannot teach creativity, passion, patience, and drive.

I don't think I am that great, but a lot of people have told me otherwise. Maybe i am too critical of my own work (which is good, I guess..).

I am in school for web design and photography at The Art Institute here in Portland, and took my first photography class ever, even though i have had a camera for over 10 years.

School will definitely help. Bottom line is your portfolio! Sure a degree will help, but good is a piece of paper if you have mediocre work in your portfolio?

If you are naturally talented, and you learn the technical/personal side of things; for fashion and wedding would be lighting, creativity, outgoing, communication!, etc, you will be alright. There are a million people out there that think they are going to be the next Galen Rowell...

 

[HBOC]

ofcourse i forgot workflow and post processing...

 

[ChrisA]

...
In terms of actual technical skills that one needs to master to become "great" (whatever that means, exactly), I'd say the three biggest ones are: control of light quality (which many people confuse with light QUANTITY), compositional rules (and when/how to break them), and DoF control. Once you can get good quality light on a well-composed scene with adequate depth of field to allow focus when needed and OOF blur when desired, I think you're pretty much there.

After that, all you need is something interesting to take a picture of. That, I'm afraid, is something altogether different, and speaks to your eye for interesting subjects, rather than your technical mastery of photographic principles; fittingly, it's also, I think, the hardest part to master. For this, I'm afraid, we WILL have to get philosophical...

I only sort of agree with this.

First off learning to expose an image, to balance ambient and flash, to control DOF and so on is like a writer learning to spell and use a word processor. Yes he must learn those things but those are trivial compared to what it takes to write at the level of the truly great, Hemingway or Twain. You have to have something to say. Any one who completes a university level "photography 101" class will be very competent at the technical issues.

Also, one does not really need an interesting subject if you are truly "great". Edward Weston got down on his back in a Mexican men's room and photographed the under side of a toilet and shot vegetables on plain backgrounds. Great artists see wonderful images in ordinary objects. It's the people without such great imagination and skill that think they need to travel to an exotic location to make interesting images. Such photos only record interesting views.

Some good exercises given to photo students that work are to...
1) Shoot 50 exposures in one hour within 20 feet you your front door, print 5 of them.
2) Spend all afternoon with just one prime lens set fixed at f/8, print your best 5 images.
3) a series where each image contains three of "something" in the frame

These exercises force you away from simply finding a good subject and taking the obvious photo of it.

Getting back to Ansel Adams. His negatives were technically good but not great. The subjects mostly ordinary. But what he did was change the image in the darkroom. What today we would call "heavy handed photoshoping" to make an image that really did not exist in nature. He even explains his process and thinking in his books. Both in his autobiography and this his "The Making of 30 Photographs" (not sure of the number) He says that the "art" is in the interpenetration made during printing where he changes the image from "what he saw into what he felt when in saw the scene" the two are not the same. His goal was to print the emotional perception of the scene.

Norman Rockwell did the same thing as Adams, images of a reality that never existed.
Adams did not shoot exotic subjects. His subjects were big hunks of rock that are in plain view 7 days a week by thousands of people. He shot from the roadside as he did not want to lug his gear around. He made great images from ordinary well known subjects.

 

[HBOC]

Getting back to Ansel Adams. His negatives were technically good but not great. The subjects mostly ordinary. But what he did was change the image in the darkroom. What today we would call "heavy handed photoshoping" to make an image that really did not exist in nature. He even explains his process and thinking in his books. Both in his autobiography and this his "The Making of 30 Photographs" (not sure of the number) He says that the "art" is in the interpenetration made during printing where he changes the image from "what he saw into what he felt when in saw the scene" the two are not the same. His goal was to print the emotional perception of the scene.

Norman Rockwell did the same thing as Adams, images of a reality that never existed.
Adams did not shoot exotic subjects. His subjects were big hunks of rock that are in plain view 7 days a week by thousands of people. He shot from the roadside as he did not want to lug his gear around. He made great images from ordinary well known subjects.

This is very true. Ansel used heavy dodge and burning in the dark room, and most people don't realize this. I wouldn't go as far as to say it is the same as using HDR, but i am sure there was a healthy use of double exposing going on..

 

[Phrasikleia]

This is very true. Ansel used heavy dodge and burning in the dark room, and most people don't realize this. I wouldn't go as far as to say it is the same as using HDR, but i am sure there was a healthy use of double exposing going on..

What remains unacknowledged in this discussion of Ansel Adams brings us back around to what I wrote earlier in this thread. Adams thought of himself as having become a real photographer when he took his first "visualized" photograph. All of the stuff he did in the darkroom was a solution to realizing a particular vision. His starting point was the vision, not the technique. When there simply was no technique to enable him to do what he wanted to do, he invented one, but he first had an idea and a philosophy to inform his production--and that idea preceded pressing the shutter button. He made that much very clear in his interviews. He was not driven by his technique but by his vision.

 

[BuddyTronic]

If you mean this for beginners, then I agree; but if you mean "ever" in the sense of "never ever use a flash or a zoom lens", I disagree. "Zooming with the feet" is ok, but don't forget that perspective is dependent on distance from the subject, NOT on focal length**, so shooting a portrait at 150mm from 24 feet away, for instance, doesn't yield the same results as shooting the same portrait with a 50mm from 8 feet away (though shooting with the 150 or 50 from 24 feet and then cropping the 50mm gives the same perspective). Prime lenses are great, and the IQ is unrivaled, but zooming with the feet is not the same as using a zoom lens.

** - Don't believe me? Try here, here, or here, for discussion and examples.

As for never (ever???) using flash, again, I agree for beginners (flash photography is another definite skill on its own, and takes as much practice as learning the camera in the first place), but I would never recommend people avoid flash altogether. Direct flash? It's really only for fill flash outdoors, but flash, per se, is just another technique.




Agreed; this always gets me. People end up with a brilliant photo of the top of the head of the guy in front of them, while the band remains illuminated only by the stage lights. The masses simply don't understand that a single on-camera flash isn't powerful enough to light an arena, EVEN on the fancy-dancy $99 P&S you picked up at Best Buy last weekend!




Completely agree. You have to learn your tools; make using them an extension of your brain, so that things just come naturally. Otherwise, you will be focused on using the camera rather than seeing the composition. In my own experience, I've just now gotten to the point where I understand my camera well enough to stop focusing on it completely and really look at my scene. And my photos, I think, have gotten better because of it.

Yeah, I don't mean Never ever ever really. Just trying to make it clear to any beginner trying to make sense of what I was trying to say and which parts are important. I hope the beginner reading this thread will take the good stuff from it and apply it. I do have a strong opinion about how a person can be assured of progress. I think a little restriction and limits at first can really serve to build up a set of skills. Like for composition, maybe a beginner should start with B&W only - just to get the attention on scale of contrast and light - things you really appreciate as a beginner more when you work in B&W exclusively. Just another idea.

Thinking back to university days, I think we had shooting assignments that were very specific. Like adjusting only one variable and shooting a bracket series - then look at the results. This was all done with film back in the stone age, but I am sure they teach the same stuff today.

Anyways, I hope I helped and didn't cause controversy - I saw the title and thought I could offer my $0.02 experience to help. Cheers!

 

[LERsince1991]

This thread is ridiculous - Theres way too much bulls***!

Check out Chase Jarvis's podcasts Hes a real inspiration for me
Subscribe via iTunes and pull a feed from his blog

Enjoy.

 

[georgemann]

Becoming a Great Photographer

There is actually some good advice here but unfortunately also a lot of very bad advice (sorry you will have to figure out which is which on your own).

I don't know about using the term great, I have seen a few great pictures produced by some very good photographers, but great photographers are like great artists, there have maybe been a dozen or so in the last 150 years.

 

[Woodrow72]

Georgemann: I disagree. While there may be difference of opinions on here and maybe some controversial advice it all has merit and value.

LERsince1991: Again I disagree. I asked for advice from professionals and amateurs alike. When I asked for the advice I knew that I would get differing opinions on the subject, I also knew that perhaps someone may venture an opinion that is different from everyone else and that everyone else may disagree with.

Phrasikleia: This is exactly why I asked this question. Ansel Adams is viewed as a good if not great photographer, HBOC is right that Ansel did a lot of darkroom work. But what you are saying is absolutely what I am trying to understand, Ansel didnt take a bad photo and make it great in the darkroom. He took a technically sound photo and in the darkroom made it how he saw the scene, often our cameras dont capture what we saw when we shot the photo. This is what the darkroom is for with film and what photoshop is for with digital, I dont feel like you can take a bad photo into the darkroom or photoshop and make it great, I feel like you can take a good photo or near great and adjust it to portray to the viewer what you saw.


There are a few people who have said that you are either born with this talent or not, that it cannot be taught. I dont think this is entirely true, I think that for some it is easier that others, but I think with enough hard work and dedication an "eye for photography" can be taught. Passion I am not sure of though, that I think you either have or you dont.

Throughout this post that have been a few or more constants and these are some of the keys, through what you have told me and through my research that will put you on the path to becoming a great photographer. I dont think that you can ever achieve greatness and merely stop, I believe that it is an ongoing process. I think that you get to a point where you can be considered a great photographer, but without continued practice, education, and hard work you will not always be great.

So here are the things that I think lead you to greatness:

1. Education - In any form that you can get it, this never stops, it is an ongoing process

2. Understanding and Mastery of Techniques - Such as: DOF, Lighting, Placement of subject, etc. This again is a never ending process, there is always more to learn and ways to hone your skill.

3. Understanding and Mastery of Equipment

4. Continued work with Post Processing - Wether it be the darkroom or photoshop

5. Study of and/or with Great Masters

6. Practice, Practice, Practice


Sorry for such a long post, I have read all of the posts so far and am loving what I am reading. I feel that you can never get to much advice or opinions from other colleagues or professionals in your field, however you do have to qualify the opinions and advice, not everyone who gives their two cents is worth the time.

Thanks again for all of the posts, and keep them coming

 

[ManhattanPrjct]

There are a few people who have said that you are either born with this talent or not, that it cannot be taught. I dont think this is entirely true, I think that for some it is easier that others, but I think with enough hard work and dedication an "eye for photography" can be taught. Passion I am not sure of though, that I think you either have or you dont.

I may get some of these details wrong, but... I remember in school learning about Monet and Sisley. Sisley, a young painter in Paris, studied under a few masters but ended up as one of Monet's contemporaries as an aspiring Impressionist. While Sisley was a technically proficient painter, he was nonetheless overshadowed by his idol (Monet) - and while you can probably find a Sisley in a museum, you never would hear his name uttered among the "greats" of the artists of his time. I found this quote by an art historian ("...almost a generic character, an impersonal textbook idea of a perfect Impressionist painting...") to be the most telling and relevant to this discourse.

While I think this thread is helpful in discussing some of the finer points of technical mastery (and the importance of technique is not debatable), only a select few artists and photographers have the ability to be either both innovative and creative enough to be truly considered "great" by their peers.

While I know I will never be a "great" photographer, I derive a lot of pleasure and satisfaction from creating photos with the skills I have - and I enjoy the finished product when I am able to do so well (and exceed my expectations). I like to think I get better with every picture I take. If you can do that, why worry about greatness at all?

 

[Doylem]

I like to think I get better with every picture I take. If you can do that, why worry about greatness at all?

True. For most of us, here on a Mac Forum, the aim should be competence rather than greatness.

Most photographers improve over the years... with practice and application. I've seen newcomers who have understood their branch of photography in a matter of weeks, while others (mostly with all the latest gear...) couldn't take a decent snap if their life depended on it... .

Re Sisley and Monet... 'Greatness' isn't a fixed attribute. The reputations of writers, artists and musicians are regularly re-appraised. The margins of history are littered with forgotten geniuses, while we, in the 21st century, are putting talentless people on a podium.

Ask people in the street to name a photographer at all... Most people in UK would offer 'David Bailey'... but might struggle to think of another...

 

[Edge100]

This thread is ridiculous - Theres way too much bulls***!

Check out Chase Jarvis's podcasts Hes a real inspiration for me
Subscribe via iTunes and pull a feed from his blog

Enjoy.

Thanks for your contribution. Much appreciated.

 

[LERsince1991]

Thanks for your contribution. Much appreciated.

I take it thats sarcastic. But seriously Chase Jarvis's podcasts and feeds are great. His take on what it takes to be great in a sense is very modest but straight to the point. It's ultimately your drive, passion and creativity. Check it out for yourself

 

[TheStrudel]

Sarcasm is pretty pointless on a forum.

I'd also point out that accusing others of "bulls***" without substantiation is equally pointless. If one must be inflammatory, reasoned logic and evidence is a preferred accessory.

At any rate, Woodrow, I think you've learned the important things.

 

[compuwar]

Getting back to Ansel Adams. His negatives were technically good but not great. The subjects mostly ordinary. But what he did was change the image in the darkroom. What today we would call "heavy handed photoshoping" to make an image that really did not exist in nature. He even explains his process and thinking in his books. Both in his autobiography and this his "The Making of 30 Photographs" (not sure of the number) He says that the "art" is in the interpenetration made during printing where he changes the image from "what he saw into what he felt when in saw the scene" the two are not the same. His goal was to print the emotional perception of the scene.

Norman Rockwell did the same thing as Adams, images of a reality that never existed.
Adams did not shoot exotic subjects. His subjects were big hunks of rock that are in plain view 7 days a week by thousands of people. He shot from the roadside as he did not want to lug his gear around. He made great images from ordinary well known subjects.

I'm sorry, but this is a fairly gross mischaracterization of Adams. While he did have his fair share of mediocre negatives, he also had a lot of simply stunning negatives, some of which he made even better in prints with the best darkroom processing talent available. One only has to look at the difference between his early work and his later work to see that he grew as a photographer over the what- about sixty-five years of photography?

Secondly, Adams was one of the first people to pack what was then pretty heavy equipment into the field- he used mules at times, he didn't just shoot from roadside- you're missing several decades of his career if that's what you believe. If you study his work (and it's well-worth studying) you'll see shots from ridges that don't have roads at all, where he had to climb up thousands of feet into the Sierras (mostly) packing a camera- sometimes with a mule, sometimes with a wife, always with a camera. While later in life he did indeed shoot a lot from the car, that wasn't his early forte, it's just that his body of work lasted for so many years that people think of him in terms of his later work.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/ansel/sfeature/sf_packing.html

Ansel Adams took his first long trip into the wilderness in 1920, when he was just eighteen. His burro, Mistletoe, carried almost a hundred pounds of gear and food; he himself carried a thirty-pound pack full of photographic equipment. Adams was heir to a long tradition of American wilderness photographers who lugged cameras, tripods, and even portable darkrooms with them into the back country in order to capture its breathtaking beauty.

Not all of Adams' work was "ordinary" and when he started shooting in Yosemite, it wasn't well-known and his first big work of winter in the High Sierra wasn't something most people had experienced at the time. People think of him only as a landscape photographer, but he spent most of the '30's doing commercial photography, and you'll find a sprinkling of portraits and still life images in his easily found works. While you'll see lots of "large hunks of rock," many of them were shot when the US National Park System was in its infancy and still more of them from perspectives that only his fellow Sierra Club members saw more than once or twice.

Having studied a lot of his work in person, I can tell you that he was a great photographer- especially considering the materials he had at his disposal for the majority of his early career. Re-prints of some of his negatives as things like variable contrast papers became available show that the latitude in his negatives was good enough, and as materials caught up, you can see that he would achieve prints that simply weren't possible at the time of the original printing- it's much easier to make a crappy shot look good in Photoshop than it is to do it in the darkroom, but straight prints of his make it obvious that he had photographic talent, it's just that he was such a master printer that people think that means he started with crappy negatives and that's generally not true. You can certainly see some crappy work very early on when he was one of the few people taking cameras far enough afield to make impressive shots for the time. What now fits in a small pack and weighs 5lbs would then have been 30+lbs of equipment.

The whole intent of the zone system was to expose for the tonal range you wanted to eventually print- to dismiss it as simply "Photoshopping" is to miss the main thrust of previsualzed shooting- which frankly was one of the main underpinnings of turning photography into a respected *art* rather than a simple documentary practice.

It's worth watching the PBS documentary to see a better picture of his work. It's even better to see an exhibit of his works, you can clearly see the photographer develop, the materials develop and his printmaking skills develop- variations of all of them are easily visible even to a budding photographer who pays attention if you can catch the traveling exhibit that's usually around.

 

[compuwar]

I would agree with all of this.

Also, drop your dSLR for a year and shoot exclusively on a 4x5 view camera, or at least a Hasselblad 500CM. Then come back here and ask the same question...

Those are two very different tools, useful for different purposes (and there's nothing a 'Blad can do that you can't do with most other medium format bodies.) View cameras will take someone to a new level in many ares, but they'll spend six months really learning to use Scheimpflug well unless they shoot every day, and even then it's a couple of months to get enough experience to really exploit it in your vision (IMO.)

Yes, but don't take what I say the wrong way. I am advising a beginner in a way that is going to bring him success.

I have no idea what guys websites you are referring to. Sure flash can be good, but my point it to teach the guy something good that he will enjoy and learn from.

That's the problem- everyone is so scared of learning to light properly that they don't get to the stage where they can work with light until the rest of the process is fairly hard-ingrained in their minds- which is why we really see good lighting from the journalists who have to use it to get shots on assignment. If you haven't read strobist.blogspot.com or McNally's sites then I'd say you're missing a large chunk of photographic knowledge. David Hobby, who started Strobist shoots for the Baltimore Sun, and has done more for portable flash shooting than anyone. Joe McNally shot for National Geographic for a lot of years, and has taken portable flash in the field to new highs (and probably lows too.)

I have seen way to many beginners use a flash incorrectly, and you probably know this too. I give the example of the rock concert in my previous post - you have seen this too. Don't you agree that all those people flashing away is absolutely stupid? I want this guy to learn so he won't be one of these guys.

Well, telling them to completly avoid flash isn't likely to get them to use it correctly, now is it? Those people are using P&S cameras that just do it- that's a far cry from someone who claims to be an amateur (should be past the beginning stage, don't you think?) looking to get "great."

Flash is great, but it doesn't teach you anything if you don't know what you are doing. I am suggesting to this chap that he follow some rules for a while and learn how a camera works first.

Flash teaches you a lot about light if you can observe the results. For instance, most beginners don't know that moving the light closer to the subject makes the light softer, not harsher- simple to observe, simple to practice, and it doesn't take a degree in physics to learn to drag the shutter, produce good fill flash or light a poorly lit subject well enough- all of which produce *better* images and get our budding photographer to start looking and thinking about lighting, which is after all what photography is all about.

TRY THIS: Next birthday party, shoot the candle blow out sequence with auto exposure ON, and flash forced OFF, camera on TRIPOD. DO THAT. Then compare with your friends who flash the hell out of the room. Your photo might have some motion blur, but it's going to capture a far nicer image I'll bet than the blown out faces and shadows that the beginner is going to get with his flash. Particularly if you have a nice SLR with nice lenses that can gather a lot of light - you paid the big bucks for the clear glass, so use it to gather NATURAL light, and you are going to be pleased. This I know and that's what I want to convey.

Try this: Instead of getting blurry images of moving faces, take three flashes to the party, light with a key, fill and grid one for the hair. Compare it to the blurry tripod shot that didn't capture the birthday celebrant in focus because they moved and the 1/15th of a second shutter speed you got on the tripod sucked.

Reading a few chapters of a book or taking a course to understand exposure, light metering, aperture - these are things that I'd bet most folks don't even know properly. I'd make that bet, because I know I just know what I know, and I can tell that most people I meet couldn't explain how a camera works if their life depended on it.

Adding lighting doesn't make it not necessary to know the same things- however it makes it more important that you know how to put it into practice. Avoiding lighting won't give you anywhere near the range of knowledge that becoming "great" entails.

More photo madness......... Ever been on a whale watching trip? Check out the bags of lenses on the boat and the clowns trying to use their $5K cameras.. Man if people would just learn the basics of photography, they could do so much more.

Personally, I include lighting in the basics of photography- The popularity of Hobby's site and the resultant images show that it's not that difficult for any dedicated beginner or amateur to learn. I don't know why so many people are so scare of learning it.

I have to disagree with most of this, partly because I'm a product of my own education, which differed quite a bit from what you've described about yours. The art school I attended placed a very high priority on conceptual development: learning those skills that will never become obsolete, as equipment inevitably will. Don't let your tools drive you; let your mind drive the tools. It is of course important to master one's craft, but if that's your starting point, it will be difficult to get beyond it--there will always be more tools to master, and you can always improve upon your mastery of them. If instead you work on thinking and seeing--on having a vision, a concept, a philosophy--you'll ultimately learn how to bring your ideas to fruition by choosing and using your tools accordingly. Naturally, this process is like an ascending double helix because theory and practice are interdependent, but if you exit the gate with technical goals, guess what...you'll get technologically-driven results (and, worse yet, you'll end up fetishizing your tools, thinking that the "answer" lies in the next, hot camera body or in the latest suite of Photoshop filters).

I think you can't ignore either the creative or the technical- if you really want to achieve the best images you can, then they both play a part, and to miss one or the other limits you in one way or another. If you're spending enough time on technical mastery that it gets in the way, then frankly you're probably not going to get there- the technical stuff isn't that fast-moving, the basic physics stay the same no matter what the camera is- with little shifts for technology sure- but it's not like it takes more than a week to get used to a new body.

I think the notion that photographers are first and foremost technicians has done a lot of disservice to the profession and is partly why it remains one of the stepchildren of the arts.

I think the fact that there are those who think you can ignore the technical does a disservice to what's shown as the "art" which probably has about as much impact. This will be controversial, but when I went and saw Liebowitz's exhibit I saw *two* great photographs[1,] one or two very good photographs[2] and a bunch of stuff anyone standing there with a camera could have captured. I was just starting to do more people photography at the time, and frankly had the Adams exhibit not been colocated, I'd have felt deeply ripped off- I went through Adam's stuff once, and found lots of interesting work, some mediocre work, and some stunning work. I went through Liebowitz twice, and couldn't find any inspiration at all. Not only was most of the "feeling" not there, but a good number of the images were technically poor as well- and I'm not counting all the snapshots- I dismissed those as anything other than background. At least if the shots had held up technically I'd have felt like I wasn't seeing someone's high-school yearbook photographer portfolio. The non-photographer I was with was similarly unimpressed with her work, which I'll mostly characterize (and i know generalizations are bad) as "Bad pictures of famous people."

Paul
[1] A shot of the Queen of England and one of a black lady.
[2] Colin Powell's portrait and one of a child by a grave.

 

[Phrasikleia]

I think you can't ignore either the creative or the technical- if you really want to achieve the best images you can, then they both play a part, and to miss one or the other limits you in one way or another. If you're spending enough time on technical mastery that it gets in the way, then frankly you're probably not going to get there-

I'm not sure I'm following you, Compuwar. You've essentially paraphrased what I had to say, but I get the sense that you want to disagree in some way. As I said:

Naturally, this process is like an ascending double helix because theory and practice are interdependent...

I think we're in agreement here.

...the technical stuff isn't that fast-moving, the basic physics stay the same no matter what the camera is- with little shifts for technology sure- but it's not like it takes more than a week to get used to a new body.

I'm sure the shift from film to digital left a few photographers out in the cold. For example, competence in the darkroom doesn't help much in gaining competence with a digital workflow. What does carry over is the basic theory, the ideas, the goals involved in "developing" a successful photograph. Knowing how to remove spots from prints using a tincture of iodine is all well and good, but it won't translate into good technique with Photoshop's cloning tool. But a very successful photographer won't have to worry about either, since he can hire a "technician" to do that stuff for him. What ultimately makes the difference--the real difference--is the vision of the photographer.

I think the fact that there are those who think you can ignore the technical does a disservice to what's shown as the "art" which probably has about as much impact.

I hope you're not implying that was my message. (see above) Foregrounding the conceptual =/= ignoring the technical.

I went through Liebowitz twice, and couldn't find any inspiration at all. Not only was most of the "feeling" not there, but a good number of the images were technically poor as well- and I'm not counting all the snapshots- I dismissed those as anything other than background.

Again I'm not able to glean your point from this anecdote. Are you suggesting that Liebowitz is one of the photographers giving photography a bad name? And it's because she neglected to become technically proficient? You admit she has produced some "great" photographs, so I'd rather judge her by those, as I think history ultimately will. I suspect she hasn't done much harm to the reputation of the profession.

 

[compuwar]

I'm not sure I'm following you, Compuwar. You've essentially paraphrased what I had to say, but I get the sense that you want to disagree in some way. As I said:

It seemed to me that you emphasized the art over the technical, and I think it needs to be more balanced. If I misread, then my bad...

I'm sure the shift from film to digital left a few photographers out in the cold. For example, competence in the darkroom doesn't help much in gaining competence with a digital workflow. What does carry over is the

Au contraire mon frair [/Bart] I think it's directly relevant- the tools changed, but not the idea of workflow, and the capabilities expanded a bit- if you were competent in the darkroom I don't think you go left behind (I'd say I was at least better than average in the darkroom, and I don't feel left behind at all- in fact, I think you're ahead because the ideas aren't different, just the tools to approach the result. I think it took non-darkroom photogs much longer to adjust because "processing" to them was putting the film in the envelop and sending it away- so they didn't even know where to start off of a baseline exposure, let alone what was possible...

basic theory, the ideas, the goals involved in "developing" a successful photograph. Knowing how to remove spots from prints using a tincture of iodine is all well and good, but it won't translate into good technique with Photoshop's cloning tool. But a very successful photographer won't have to worry about either, since he can hire a "technician" to do that stuff for him. What ultimately makes the difference--the real difference--is the vision of the photographer.

I'd argue that knowing that you could even remove the spots was something most people had no idea of- except perhaps for cleaning the negatives/slides- it's more about learning what you can do than how you can do it IMO. Let's face it- very few photographers have real vision anyway- everyone doesn't get a pony- everyone isn't special and that's a part of the problem. People tend to emulate rather than innovate- but you can't swap technical skill for innovative vision, so the two remain separate, and I think that's the distinction I'm trying to communicate- a bad vision isn't necessarily as good as a good technician...

I hope you're not implying that was my message. (see above) Foregrounding the conceptual =/= ignoring the technical.

No, I'm not implying that, I'm just trying to differentiate the fact that it's not vision uber alles-- which is my problem with Leibowitz- her work (to me) isn't inspirational vision-wise (I feel I could do much better with at least 80% of her subjects) and it falls flat technically too- Even if you connect with her work, her pictures are mostly mundane and that to me is a shame- because she had the raw material to do so much better- but I think she got away with a lot because of who she knew and the quirkyness, rather than a real vision- that is doing it slightly differently not because of what she saw, but just to be different.

Again I'm not able to glean your point from this anecdote. Are you suggesting that Liebowitz is one of the photographers giving photography a bad name? And it's because she neglected to become technically proficient? You admit she has produced some "great" photographs, so I'd rather judge her by those, as I think history ultimately will. I suspect she hasn't done much harm to the reputation of the profession.

Two great photographs out of several hundred is hardly anything to write home about. The harm I think she's done is to eclipse people who were much better photographers due more to time and place than talent. She's certainly no Maplethorpe or Weston- there's more "she got $celebrity to put her hands over her bare breasts" than there is "that's a wonderful image" to her work as far as I can see. Maybe she feels she's following a vision, but if she is, I find it to be uninspiring and mostly uninteresting. Even with art I don't particularly like personally, I can usually see some sense of what the artist was trying to portray or the mood/feeling/tone- with her, I was underwhelmed because she's noted as a people photographer, and I know folks who are much better at people photography, both technically and artistically. Personally, I doubt they'll be hanging any of her images in the Louvre in the next 100 years- but maybe she's got some body of work that I haven't seen, or maybe I'm missing something big.

The people who I know that take wonderfully emotional people photographs are also technically proficient- and they prove it week in and week out- I guess I feel that many people profess "vision" or "style" or "not following the rules" as an excuse for poor performance rather than an adjunct to good work (and I'm not saying you're doing so) so I like to differentiate and point out that there are enough folks doing both well enough that the excuse is lame in my book.

I've got a friend who never shoots raw. His work is so imaginative that it's phenomenal- he shoots as a hobby and gives his work away as stock, and he's one of the most prolific and popular photographers on another site. The few times I've shot in his studio, I've gotten great results, and I'm really happy that his Facebook pic and another couple of images he uses himself are mine- but he can get away with shooting JPEG because his technical skills are a match for his artistic skills- no question that even if he shoots something that's not my particular taste I'll still see where he's coming from and I'll see something that's at some level inspirational more often than not. He connects with his models well, and it shows in the images. All the vision in the world doesn't get you a connection with the subject, all the connection in the world doesn't get you a vision, and all the technique in the world doesn't get you either of the other two- so I suppose my main point is that it really doesn't matter how you get there, but it does matter that you arrive with all three and that overly favoring any of them is bad, but technique less so than the others, because poor technique can overshadow good vision and a good connection- candid shooters show us that a connection isn't always a major factor, and formulaic portrait shooters show us that vision isn't necessary to achieve wonderful results, but a poorly lit or horribly exposed shot is difficult to recover from.

 

[compuwar]

I'm sure the shift from film to digital left a few photographers out in the cold.

Oh, last-minute thought- Darkroom photographers who didn't "get" Photoshop could always use Lightzone, which really wasn't all that different other than the lack of odor...

 

[Phrasikleia]

Once again, compuwar, you seem to be agreeing with me in the guise of disagreement.

I said:

What does carry over is the basic theory, the ideas, the goals involved in "developing" a successful photograph.

And you said:

...the tools changed, but not the idea of workflow...if you were competent in the darkroom I don't think you go left behind...in fact, I think you're ahead because the ideas aren't different, just the tools to approach the result.

And the same goes for most of the rest of what you just wrote. You and I are pretty much on the same page. So I think we can agree to agree.

 

[compuwar]

So I think we can agree to agree.

Hmmm, maybe we can disagree about disagreeing too?