What Makes a Great Photo (according to Digg users)

Standing out in a crowd by Flickr user Angelrays

The people have spoken. As mentioned yesterday, Jörg's What Makes a Great Photo? post has been generating a lot of buzz. Once it was Kottke'd, it wasn't long before made its appearance on the community bookmarking site Digg.

Raul Gutierrez sent me the link to Digg item. The comments make for some very interesting reading. There's a lot along the lines of this:

bizzare.. and stupid.. these
photos are lame, and not at all impressive.

dive in and randomly explore flickr, you'll find dozens of photos that are better than
any of these!

The photo above is the first one that popped up for me on Flickr's Interestingness page. On the Flickr page it says:"There are lots of things that make a photo 'interesting' (or not) in the Flickr. Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing." Basically, it's an algorithm built on various forms of Flickr popularity. If you browse by Interestingness on Flickr you'll see a lot of nature photography, macros and super-contrasty HDR stuff.

There is also this:

I wasn't impressed by any of those images and the only kind of interesting one was Sally Mann's. I love macro nature photography because it's a window into a tiny, colorful and often alien world that you probably wouldn't otherwise notice. To me, that's what makes a great photo. Some chick lying on the floor, looking like a rank amateur on PornoTube doesn't say "art" or "great photo" to me; the closest I get to a message from it is, "Oh, for God's sake, girl, swallow!" Maybe my art sensor is broken.

There are positive replies as well (which has to be the case since it received more than 400 Diggs), but what fascinates me is the us vs. them conversation that often erupts with regard to photography. I'm not personally interested in macros, or nature photography in general or HDR photos and sometimes that leads to people accusing me of artworld snobbery. (Which I find pretty amusing, I hafta say.)

Slightly tangential, but I think germane: I am fully immersed in the world of fine art contemporary color photography - I love it, I love the community that's grown up around it, I'm an advocate, a booster, a champion. I'm often surprised however, by this: Collectively it seems that we have such a short memory regards what consititutes fine art photo - until very recently most color photography was considered schlocky. The idea that the "only b&w photography can be fine art photography" is not part of some long distant past.

There's a much broader conversation around all of this, but I have some work to do... I'll be back with more thoughts soon.

Related: Alec Soth: On the Forums

Comments

[Chad]

Somewhere you are trouncing on some little boys/girls dreams with this post. I hope you are happy with yourself Jen, real happy.

[Jen Bekman]

I know this is going to make you all go "Oof!" but the first time I saw HDR stuff I thought it was awfully pretty.

People like it because it's visually pleasing, right? The saturated supernatural colors are so dramatic - it looks like a movie in a still picture in some ways.

Do I want it on my wall? Highly unlikely. But a lot of people love it and it's an avenue by which they've become super excited about photography. I think that's kind of cool.

[j zorn]

disappointing to see a quote like that from Stephen Shore. it's a site for amateur photographers that allows them to share the pictures they take with other amateur photographers. cliches and conventions abound everywhere. the fine art photography world is full of them as well.

[Joe]

Shore talks about flickr without knowing anything about it. Flickr is about photography the way a photo album or vacation slide show is about photography. It's like flipping through your friends' envelopes of snapshots from the drug store.

[dalton]

Flickr is also a great networking tool - which not everyone has access to in the non-virtual world. And while the signal to noise ratio is not great overall, I've got a good contact list and spend a lot of time looking at photos which I think are really great.

And while most HDR photos are hideous and tacky, I've found the dynamic range of digital to be lacking at times, and tasteful use of HDR can come in quite handy. It's much the same thing Ansel Adams used to do with expansion and contraction while developing negatives, but with digital tools.

[Chris Norris]

Joe, I disagree about flickr. I know I'm just an amateur at best and a philistine at worst, but you're making quite a sweeping generalization about a site with tens of thousands of users. I'm a flickr user so my bias is to be expected, but I don't like the idea that some people view flickr as being entirely "snapshots from the drug store". My selections on there aren't as meticulously picked as my portfolio, but it's good for people like me, with no formal photography or art training at all, and no art/photography community immediately accessible, to get some encouragement and possibly feedback.

Granted, the feedback and encouragement is mostly like from other amateurs, and I'm routinely disappointed by which photos of mine the flickr masses decide to make popular, but to discount the whole site as snapshots just doesn't sit right with me.

[Jen Bekman]

Todd... I hear you. I could see where you'd draw the conclusion.

I sure didn't write a post singing Flickr's praises, and although I could, I imagine that my reasons for thinking it's great are different than your average Flickr user's.

Flickr has loads of the macros and sunsets and the like, and some people are way into it. As I said initially, it's not my thing, and there's far less of the work you and I are generally interested in to be found there.

My own tastes definitely have their conventions and I think they are probably quite apparent, considering how much new work I show within in a single year.

One of the reasons that I have a panel for Hey, Hot Shot! is because it keeps me from getting stuck in my own rut - panelists often notice work that I might've blown right by.

It's a good thing to have that input, because I've found that it broadens my horizons. Conversations like this one do too, so thanks for contributing.

[Todd W.]

Sorry if I insinuated that this was an anti-Flickr post. Reading it through my bias, it does make the macro/sunset/postcard crew seem a bit silly.

Sometimes it's hard to recognize our own "tastes" have conventions that slide into cliche just as easily as any other. Consider your link to Eliot's cliche post the other day.

[Todd W.]

One of my favorite comments about Flickr is from Stephen Shore, quoted on 2point8: "I went on to flickr and it was just thousands of pieces of shit, and I just couldn’t believe it. And it’s just all conventional, it’s all cliches, it’s just one visual convention after another."

And this HDR thing just has to die. Please. Curse you Adobe for making it so easy.

[Jen Bekman]

I hope I didn't come acoss as a Flickr Hatr!

That wasn't my intention... I actually am a big fan of Flickr for lots of reasons. But it's all about your community and your network.

If I merely navigated it by what was popular, I'd be drowning in sunsets and kittens. Instead, I use it as a tool and also get to keep up with friends and family. And yes, I see some good work there too. I wouldn't say that it's easy to find, but well, when is it ever?

[James Archer]

HDR...oof...always makes me think of those Thomas Kinkade paintings one sees being sold at the mall.

[dalton]

I know this is entirely off-topic from the original post, but I just have to stick up for HDR a little bit here. I think we'll all agree that it's often mis-used. I did a quick search for HDR on Flickr, and all I got was piles of tacky crap. But HDR is just a tool, and as such, it's what we make of it.

I shot an image on my way home tonight with HDR in mind just to make a point: http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=439339281size=o
This photo has a dynamic range that I'm just not able to get otherwise with my digital camera. Most importantly, the effect is intentionally subtle. To my eye, it's exactly what I saw when I took the photo.

[Todd W.]

The promise of HDR is much greater than its current application. When I first understood the process, I was optimistic that as digital matures, more and more of these sorts of software-based techniques would allow photography to go in directions that analog film-based photography could not. We're still in the early phases, so once the novelty wears off I'm sure we'll see some people start applying HDR in more subtle and powerful ways. But right now, there is some painfully bad stuff being churned out.

As to the purpose of Flickr, I think sites like Flickr and You Tube etc have large enough user populations to embrace many many subcultural niches within them. But if you sit and watch "Everyone's Photos" go by for a few minutes, you can see that most people are using it for vacation photos, casual party photos, family photos etc. The "art" photos are a minority and the "fine art" flavored amongst those a minority still. For any of us to expect a steady stream of gallery-ready work to float by seems unrealistic and undervalues the skill, attention and purposefulness required to make a great photo.

[j zorn]

i use flickr and i've never looked at "Everyone's Photos". why Shore would even be talking about the site seems strange. it has nothing to do with his world and his words just seem to be a swipe at the little guy. flickr is a giant camera club (or endless series of clubs) and does not pretend to offer "a steady stream of gallery-ready work". maybe Shore just doesn't like camera clubs.