My opinion is that taste is a continuum, with pure personal taste on one end and pure social or cultural taste on the other. Which one dominates is determined by your personality and self-confidence.
As an example, I believe I would have liked Eugene Smith’s photographs, and disliked Klein’s, no matter my social circumstances.
My adage is that while there is usually more than one way to do it right, there are many more ways to do it wrong.
Depends on how you define photography.
Using a camera to get a photo is not enough.
Photography, as others pointed out, can be a craft or an art.
If you do industrial product photography for catalogs for a living, it is not subjective.
If you do fashion photography or food photography, the percentage of art does increase, because you have to be creative to get emotional pictures.
If you do photography as a pure art, it is very subjective.
Should you be able to cover 100% craftmansship befor you are allowed to do art? No, not really, but this can be argued about.
Fortunately there is no license required to just make photos and do whatever you like with them, so everyone is allowed to do “art”, or whatever they please 
Yes, happily enough, everyone is allowed to take photos and do art. If they are any good, well that is an entirely different matter.
And the point I am trying (admittedly perhaps, very sloppily at that) to get across here is that “good” is a lot less subjective than most people think and a lot more “measurable” and “quantifiable”.
What is “good” for someone depends solely on his or her expectations. But expectations are subjective, even if certain groups of people share the same expectations.
In fields such as art the measuring and quantifying is not something a low level scientist/student would recognize as measuring and quantifying. I think this is the stumbling block for many. Thinking that because you can’t quantify, in simple terms, anything goes.
And you can certainly say if something is good or bad and it’s not “just your opinion man” if, and that’s a big IF, the opinion is grounded in experience knowledge and talent. Many photographers haven’t really thought or looked enough at really good photography to understand why their work isn’t good.
There are also very many different good and that is indeed very subjective. Someone experienced and critical should be able to recognise good in most of it’s forms and they do. This is one way of knowing that good isn’t completely subective.
But everyones judgement of good isn’t good in a way that matters to the field/art. That doesn’t deny anyone their interests or judgement but some judgement has more scope and relevance. Usually due to experience, talent and effort.
Yes, in the “field/art” of photography are many educated, experienced, knowledgeable and talented people that have to some degree a common ground on what is “good” and what is “art”. And yes again, “many photographers haven’t really thought or looked enough at really good photography to understand why their work isn’t good”. I am again and again marveled at how good some photographers are. But it still depends on the prevailing culture of a society.
Coming back to the original assumption of @zerosapte. If I would post an image of mine here, would anybody be really able to measure and quantify it’s quality and artistic value?
I disagree wholly.
To all I wrote?
What makes a really good image is difficult to quantify. But there are guidences which help to produce them. The rule of thirds or a mechanism which leads your eye into an image like a path, stream, road, track etc are usefull devices which will improve the chances of taking a good image. A classic example was the winner of the annual countryfile callendar competition about three years ago. A quick snap on a point and shoot by a farmers wife while driving sheep through the snow was an image any professional would have been proud of. She didn’t spend hours planning or need expensive equipment, it was shear luck, the right time the right place coupled with both of the rules mentioned above. Those rules plus duditious cropping will produce superior images on a regular basis. But of course just like painted art, some images are of exceptional artistic quality & may not follow convention.
To your claim that What is “good” for someone depends solely on his or her expectations.
Do you not think that generaly, if an image is ‘Good’, most people will agree that it is a ‘good image’? Not because they are copying or falling in line but because ‘Good’ images are pretty universal in their apeal, even if the subject matter is not to our personal taste.
No, because “universal” usually means “at this point in time and for this particular culture” (which is the point I think @Thomas_Do is also trying to make). Everybody’s definition of good is partly a result of their cultural environment. Show the same picture to a chinese guy living in the 1500 and you’ll get a very different answer. You see it also (and specially) with music: that is an art form for which the cultural definition of “good” changes practically with every generation.
Yes ! I think it’s far easier to know when something is not good technically, artisticly it’s more difficult to judge. But combine the two and you are able to say something is not good / I wouldn’t buy or put that on the wall!
Even faster than that. If I had a single measure to judge music it would be if anyone is listening to that song fifty years from now. I doubt many tunes today would pass that test in the future given this age of disposable music, and I certainly don’t see a way to forecast that for a release issued last week.
That “good” is valid only for a cultural context is not a gotcha.
Of course greatness long term comes from being recognized as good across many contexts. Either often by being either very culturally specific or by just speaking to people for a long time.
Of course such canons are gate kept and produced by the ruling class but the process isn’t completely without merit. Even if the good in this case is accidental.
So please judge the two “artworks” below on a scale from 0…100. The second one is a drawing, so do not judge the reproduction quality but the original. Please also explain, why you judged this way.
I would like to see, if different forum users agree on the quality of the images, when ask to quantify their personal impression. Please, do not search for background information on the internet and try to judge independently from other votes.
In this forum we are a relatively homogeneous group of photography-interested enthusiasts. So, the differences should be rather small.
Image 1
Image 2
You do understand that this exercise makes no sense. Particularly for the photo. Photography is generally serial. Even when sold or displayed as single images their relevance most often come from the rest of the images in the series or other pieces by the artist. This isn’t a problem either, it could be a problem for a commercial photographer but they do craft not art. (unless they are both)
The photograph in itself is unremarkable, even so bad it looks intentional. As part of a series or as a documentation of a performance it could be part of a great thing. On it’s own its nothing.
The sketch is very skillfully done. If it has some age it’s probably great. If it’s recent just good because some of the moves are so well understood now.
Personally I cant believe she chose that purse to go with that outfit… 
