The absolute worst kind of photographer is the brainwashed ideologue.

Nice blogpost.

>>3015824
the worst kind of photographer, are the ones who only rant on the internet instead of actually taking photos.

Someone just learned about idealogues for the first time.

>>3015824
Are you 14?

>>3015834
(projecting)

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>>3015824

Goes for any art really. Technique in a medium is unto itself - drawing, painting, photography, etc. All of them have their own sets of principles to convey what is considered to be technically sound. For something like photos, that'd be adjusting settings for exposure, or how different ISOs work. These are basic fundamentals that one has to know to understand how to operate every aspect of the camera and to understand what kind of effect different techniques will produce.

"Art" is the application of technique to an aesthetic purpose. Sometimes that aesthetic has a name and it follows into a greater theme or movement (constructivism, post modernism, etc...). Or sometimes it's just the artist going off of what feels right or evocative for their own vision that doesn't fall into a category or greater whole.

The kind of person you described already took the first great misstep in any artform. The idea that art can be "bad" or "wrong."

There is art that is technically unsound. If I took a picture that was near totally black or white because it was badly exposed, this is bad technique. There is next to nothing in terms of content in a picture like that, and there is little in the way of any aesthetic to even observe beyond a black or white picture.

Art can be "bad" for a specific artform or aesthetic. If I tried to take all the technique employed for a great landscape piece and tried to apply it to portraiture, it would likely be a bad photo and vice-versa.

But if the artist has their own intent, their own aesthetic, and achieves it through the use of deliberate technique? Who is to say they are "bad"? Maybe within the scope of a specific artistic genre. But these are reinvented all the time, or employed with an artist's own personal twist for their own personal artistic vision.

The photog who's failed is the photog who fails to respect that not everyone sees shit the same.

>>3015847
>(projecting)
Don't use that word, you don't know what it means. Stop writing essay-long rants if you can't give better examples yourself.

>>3015896
That was my first post in the thread...

>>3015886
> Who is to say they are "bad"?

Critics? The general public? Wtf dude, taste is not objective, but that does not mean it's purely subjective. Most people outside of 4chan live in a society after all.

>>3015886

So, there is only art and non-art (snapshits)? What is the ultimate measure of this, the intent of the maker, the judgement of the audience, both?

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>>3016090
>Critics?
You'd hope a critic would be informed about the myriad of aesthetic movements throughout a medium (photography) and know enough about how technique is employed to achieve those themes to say whether or not a work is achieving a specific aesthetic

But what I'm getting at is not all artists are shooting for the same target, or a target labeled "post modernism" or labeled anything else.

>The general public?
Depends on the time and place. Different eras, different cultures - all of them have subjective tastes like you said. If the artist was pursuing any kind of mass appeal, I would agree they need to observe the tastes of their contemporaries and heed them whenever they're creating because the goal isn't necessarily their own vision. At the point you're making work for someone else, you're not an "artist" anymore so much as you are a "graphic designer" or a "producer." You're employing technique

This is not to say commission work can't be artistic, will explain in a sec

>>3016144
>So, there is only art and non-art (snapshits)? What is the ultimate measure of this, the intent of the maker, the judgement of the audience, both?

You're correct that it has to do with intent, or I like to call it authorial intent. It's not a widely accepted mode of criticism in postmodern / new criticism, even though it's based off of what I picked up off of being trained in literary new criticism. Authorial intent, or in this case "artistic intent" just seeks to deconstruct a work (literate, visual, etc) in a manner as to understand what the author's intent was, even if that author had no intent.

Looking at historical work, you observe the contemporary context, the artist's life, their own aesthetic ideas, and discern what they were trying to do with a work. Operate under the assumption that everything is deliberate, and work backwards from there. If it turns out nothing is deliberate - then whether the author was trying or not, their intent was to NOT try.

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>>3016231
My point is no one puts a pen to paper or their finger on the shutter blindly. Or if they did, then we need to understand why they did it blindly. There is intent behind that - there is thought behind that. There is intent behind setting the F-stop a certain way, or the ISO, or taking a picture from a certain angle, or employing technique in a certain way.

There are a bunch of targets labeled "X" where X stands for "Constructivism" or "Postmodernism" or "Absurdism" or a litany of other pre-defined artistic / aesthetic modes or themes.

But if the target is somewhere between X or it's not at X at all - it's a target of the artist's own design, what then? Maybe they hit that target amazingly - it just didn't fit into any easily understood existing theme. If that's the case, the question must be asked: "what were they shooting at?"

It doesn't mean people are obliged to like or even respect your work - has nothing to do with being accepted or "no art is bad." It has everything to do with understanding the causality behind a work. Had there been no artist to cause the work to happen, it would have never happened. So all I suggest is to understand the artists and what their goals are. If they are achieving their goals, and those goals are subjective aesthetic goals, did they "fail?" Did they make a bunch of "snapshits?" I argue no.

Now if their goal was to make money, or get people to like their work, or execute a perfect example of X aesthetic using photography, and none of those things happened in the way they employed their technique, did they fail? Yes, they absolutely did fail to hit what they were aiming at if none of those things are achieved.

Again, not trying to sound pretentious, but just trying to give perspective that the person like >>3015824 describes makes the flawed assumption everyone's shooting at the same target. They're not. Everyone's shooting at their own. And people can set that target where ever they like.

>>3016231
>>3016237
upboated

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Is this bad?

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>>3016237

You are making an assumption of deliberation and guided intent that may not always be applicable. If an artist can explain their process in concrete terms rather than vague generalities or shows a consistency or a progression in their body of work I may be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Some artists I've spoken with clearly have no deliberation in the creation process. When they try to explain their work it is obvious that these are explanations they have appended to their work to demonstrate a social conscientiousness or philosophical depth that was not involved in the creation of the piece.

There may have been an artistic mind behind the creation of the work but it may be a different hand from the person showing us the work now. Some artists lack artistic integrity.

>>3016585
Not really. Play around with the cropping with the strong horizontal lines in the photo. It will shift the balance

Raise u're hand if u're a college sophomore 2!!

>>3017279
how so?

>>3017293
>u're hand
>college sophomore