First video in the series of UNPOPULAR OPINION videos where I talk about certain uncomfortable truths is this, where I make the point that photography isn’t subjective.
The video was filmed with the SONY a7R I and Yashica ML 28mm f/2.8.
The montage was done in DaVinci Resolve on Manjaro Linux.
The video thumbnail was done with GIMP on Manjaro Linux.
Oh no! Better tell TATE
only joking before even looking at your video. Will do now!
4:35 later
You’re wrong! 
Sharpness, adherens to compositional rules etc. are useless in determining the quality of a photo.
are bure boke
Regarding compositional rules they are like any compositional device (such as language) most effective when skillfully deviated from. Meaning comes from the selective breaking of those rules.
Art is however not judged subjectively in the manner people sometimes think. Art is still subjective. Like all culture there is a process and process of “peer review”.
Sorry gotta go unfinished. Hungry kids baying at my feet…
Sure, there are rules about what makes technically good photos. And there are rules that define what is aesthetically pleasing.
But in my opinion, art should always be more than that. It should surprise, show new aspects, and perhaps intentionally break the rules in the process. You are certainly right, simply hiding bad photography behind the term “subjectivity” is wrong. But a technically good photo with a balanced composition is also far from being “great art”.
Thanks for the video and your opinion.
Whilst cooking I realised something. Most of the “non subjective” standards mentioned aren’t actually standards to use for judging/evaluating a photo.
They are tools the photogapher may use when making a photograph. You can’t judge a work by judging the tools and mechanisms. You judge the results not what tools have been used. You can retroactively decipher how to repeat or develop the results by understanding what tools have been made to put it together.
So there is a mismatch of categories.
Key words being skillfully and selective.
I disagree. Just like you can judge a piece of furniture by how well it was put together, painted and polished.
Now, I’m not saying this tells the entire story, or even the most important story, but that it is a story worth telling.
But the history of photography and furniture making shows that those aren’t the story. They are the elements that support the story.
Chair by Axel Einar Hjorth 1932
photo by Tritten at wikipedia.
So talking about stories it would be like it has to have an arc or a beginning, middle, end. Or follow certain templates. Good stories may often use those “tools” but no one should praise a film for having a beginning. It’s not really worth talking about. When making your own film however it’s a good thing to consider having a beginning.
Showing me exceptions does nothing else but prove the rule.
No I haven’t, mind throwing a link down my way?
Photography is a medium. How it is used is unrelated to what it is.
Using Picasso is a Godwin point of art, to be honest. He was an asshole relentlessly copying his peers. There was a saying among his artists friends: “hide all unfinished work before Picasso comes to your place, because he will copy it and do it better”. He changed styles as fashions changed. He was first and foremost a best-seller working to be a best-seller, not to be an artist and exploited his peers and family to do so.
Metrics of quality already suck in science because most of them are flawed and finally arbitrary, I don’t see how you can pretend to break art into a couple of them. Also… please… the rule of third is the safety jacket of the mediocre and the golden proportion is entirely made up (my favorite: Notre-Dame de Paris follows the golden proportion if you forget the 3 first steps of the main stair that were buried when the street was backfilled somewhere in the 16th century).
I get that trying to devise objective (and absolute) properties to objects appeases the mind and gives a sense of security. But it’s a foolish task.
Notre-Dame, maybe no golden ratio, but often somewhere hidden the esoteric beauty of geometry and maths in architecture, painting, music, writing…
Either you misunderstood me, or I am doing a poor job at making my point, possibly due to English not being my first language.
Howerver, quoting your very own words.
**Art is what happens when you stack personal expression on top of craftsmanship**. Craftsmanship is the practical ability to manipulate some medium to shape it into something that matches a design. Then, personal expression is about creating that design to express something that seemed important to the artist at the time (whether it’s formulated at a conscious level or at an intuitive level, whatever).
This is what I’m talking about, the craftmanship that is necessarily there first before any personal expression and taste can have any right to be put into a work of art.
In short, the point I was trying to make was that you first need to master the craft and then work on the art. First learn the rules and then break them.
There is an order implied in this that I don’t agree with. You can develop craftsmanship and the artistic side at the same time.
Some are constrained by ability, some are constrained by sensabiluty. But you need both.
Yes you need both, but it is my opinion that you need the ability first.
Just like when you build a house, you first need to lay down a foundation and that is barren of any style, or beauty. It’s just a cold, ugly rock and only then you get to build and decide how many floors, how many rooms, what style, what color etc.
But without the foundation nothing stands. Just like without first learning the ability, the craftmanship, there is nothing to give meaning, purpose, sense, direction and reason to any sensibility there might be.
Now I am not saying you can’t develop these two at the same time, but that at least at the beginning, craft has to be the more important skill you develop.
Your opinion is basically the miliionth variant of the oldest and most influential aesthetic theory in Europe, which was formulated by the Pythagorean school 2500 years ago. You may know the famous anecdote of the Pythagorean hammers and his idea of “music is mathematical”, under whose influence was the Canon of Polykleitos.
When it comes to architecture, the best examples are ancient greek temples. However, even though they were designed strictly according to mathematics or ratios, greek architects found that it should be modified in real practice, which is known as Entasis.
Not really. Nan Goldin is notoriously known for sucking at actual photo technics, Annie Leibovitz is known to out-source all the stage lighting to interns… It’s more complicated. Craftsmanship is there, somewhere, but to say it’s first is an exaggeration.
Then taste is absolute bullshit. See cultural studies… Taste is defined by those who have the means to buy expensive art and control museums by the means of foundations and so on. Taste is cultural domination of the elites.
Just think about the fact that any definition of art will necessarily include subjective matters. Taste and beauty are the biggest ones. Then, all the question comes down to: who is the judge in these subjective matters.
The answer is $$$ or is closely linked to the benefits and side-effects of having $$$.
Poor people don’t get to fund foundations for the arts. That’s a closed market with an entry fee.
So taste is the absolute bullshit. It’s a social token. It’s a social object. It belongs to you social class, your original one or your new one.
I’d argue that your own work is more artistic than technically sound, the minimal blender stuff and the beer bottles had more artistry than craftsmanship.
