What Makes a Photographer When Everyone is Taking Pictures

On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 14:59:38 GMT, "MC" wrote:

Sandman wrote:

In article m,
Savageduck wrote:

An interesting take.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/what-...n-everyone-is-
taking-pictures

I think it just comes back to what has been said here many times. A
photographer is someone that takes a photo with an intention,
whatever that intention may be. This means that angle, composition,
exposure and a hundred other parameters may or may not be involved.

But in the end, that's just pretentious bull****, a "photographer" is
by definition a person that uses a camera to produce a photograph, so
it applies equally to anyone of course. When we, or him, use the term
"photographer" it is used in a more pretentious way, to mean someone
that can create interesting, beautiful, thought provoking
photographs. And I'm fine with that, but the distinction says more
about the person making the judgement than about those that
photograph their food and put on instagram.

Does scribbling on paper with a pencil make you an artist?
Does frying an egg make you a chef?

I think you can only be called a "photographer" if you can show that
you have technical skills as such and that the images you create over a
period of time show a consistancy of skill and planning (one image does
not a photograper make). Otherwise you are just someone who takes a
picture, same as someone who cooks dinner is a just someone who can
cook and someone who scribbles on paper is just someone who can use a
pencil.

And runners are people who run. They don't all have to finish up on an
olympic podium.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 12:06:19 -0800, Savageduck
wrote:

On Jan 16, 2016, Sandman wrote
(in ):



Jackson Pollock is a good example, his "number 5" painting is the most
expensive painting ever sold, and required exactly no skill what so ever. It
is
by essence a "my child could have done that" painting.

Regarding that statement I would ask, have you ever got up close to one of
the Pollock paint drip works?
They actually demand closer examination to see that there is a very strong
element of deliberation in his application of the paint. They are
abstractions which when veiwed in the flesh are breath taking. Much the same
can be said of the works of the masters, “The Night Watch” for example
demands a lifetime of examination.

Here is Pollock #2 shot with my D70 at the Munsen-Williams-Proctor Art
Institute.
https://db.tt/Rp1N1OY1

That's a lousy shot. The picture frame is neither straight, level nor
square! Call yourself a photographer!

BTW: That is another NY Museum, Upstate in Utica that is worth a visit.
http://www.mwpai.org


"Art" isn't about skill, it's about what people think about your creations.

It is also about making the effort to create. All the critics creat is
criticism.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Jan 16, 2016, Eric Stevens wrote
(in ):

On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 12:06:19 -0800, Savageduck
wrote:

On Jan 16, 2016, Sandman wrote
(in ):



Jackson Pollock is a good example, his "number 5" painting is the most
expensive painting ever sold, and required exactly no skill what so ever.
It is by essence a "my child could have done that" painting.

Regarding that statement I would ask, have you ever got up close to one of
the Pollock paint drip works?
They actually demand closer examination to see that there is a very strong
element of deliberation in his application of the paint. They are
abstractions which when veiwed in the flesh are breath taking. Much the
same
can be said of the works of the masters, “The Night Watch� for example
demands a lifetime of examination.

Here is Pollock #2 shot with my D70 at the Munsen-Williams-Proctor Art
Institute.
https://db.tt/Rp1N1OY1

That's a lousy shot. The picture frame is neither straight, level nor
square!

Agreed. That was shot quite quickly with my D70. I was more concerned with my
wife’s welfare and how she was enjoying the museum visit than focusing on
the minutia of photography, and producing documentary images.
https://db.tt/LPQuHIlD

Call yourself a photographer!

Nope! just a guy with a camera.



BTW: That is another NY Museum, Upstate in Utica that is worth a visit.
http://www.mwpai.org


"Art" isn't about skill, it's about what people think about your
creations.

It is also about making the effort to create. All the critics creat is
criticism.



--

Regards,
Savageduck

In article m, Savageduck
wrote:

On Jan 16, 2016, Sandman wrote (in
):

Sandman:
Jackson Pollock is a good example, his "number 5" painting is the
most expensive painting ever sold, and required exactly no skill
what so ever. It is by essence a "my child could have done that"
painting.

Regarding that statement I would ask, have you ever got up close to
one of the Pollock paint drip works?

Yep.

They actually demand closer examination to see that there is a very
strong element of deliberation in his application of the paint.

Not if you ask Pollock himself, who describe them as works where the act of
deliberation has been removed, further showing that the "intent" rather than
the result is more important to some. No judgement about that, I merely
commented on the lack of actual skill involved in his most famous works.

They are abstractions which when veiwed in the flesh are breath
taking. Much the same can be said of the works of the masters,
â??The Night Watchâ?� for example demands a lifetime of
examination.

Did you just compare Pollocks drippings to Rembrandts The Night Watch? Well.. I
don't know what to say...

Here is Pollock #2 shot with my D70 at the Munsen-Williams-Proctor
Art Institute. https://db.tt/Rp1N1OY1

Indeed, and a good example of my point exactly.

Sandman:
"Art" isn't about skill, it's about what people think about your
creations.

It is also about making the effort to create.

Don't know if I agree with that. A person making an effort to create art
doesn't mean it *is* art. As I said, art is in the eye of the beholder, not by
virtue of the creator that merely just says it is art.

It's more of a consensus thing rather than a declarative thing. IF enough
people consider your creation to have artistic value, then it is art. If YOU
consider it to have artistic value and no one is agreeing with you, then it is
not.



--
Sandman

On 1/16/2016 2:32 PM, Sandman wrote:
In article , Mayayana wrote:

Is it inherently pretentious to practice an art form
and see it that way?

No, it is pretentious to say that person A is an artist and person B is not
just because you dislike the method, the result or anything in between.

I don't think that without more, the label "pretentious" can be applied
to the situation you describe. For example, I used to know an art dealer
who would convince his clients that certain artists were up and coming.
The price of those artists work therefore increased. I had spoken with
some art expert friends of mine, who stated unconditionally that those
pieces were worthless. The purchasers regarded them as art. T think the
dealer really considered his customers marks. I knew some of those
purchasers and consider them to be pretentious A-holes. There is a
commercial for wines, showing a pretentious wine customer defining Pinot
Noir, as meaning peanut of the night.
Pretentious is when one has know real knowledge, and is trying to
convince others that he/she is a shrewd authority.


Some artforms require lots of skill, which means that the artist has spent
years and years practicing. But some artforms doesn't require much technical
skill. Photography certainly did require skill in the early days. You needed to
know how a camera worked in order to produce an image.


Usually, one still needs a certain degree of skill to consistently
produce decent images. Clearly not everybody likes everything. But, I
think, especially with abstracts, a degree is required. Whether it is a
learned skill, or an innate skill, is, quite relevant. One can learn
"composition rules" up the ying yang, and produce sharp well exposed
images, but without the innate ability to create an interesting subject,
the image will usually be nothing more than a postcard, or worse. Yes,
we have visited this subject before.

These days, even the cheapest smart phones have a more than capable camera that
figures out al of that automatically. Furthermore, you have tons and tons of
"dark room" post processing available to you, to make a mundane shot look
really interesting with the click of a button.

Just because that required tons of technical skills fifty years ago and none
these days doesn't mean the end result is any less.

Jackson Pollock is a good example, his "number 5" painting is the most
expensive painting ever sold, and required exactly no skill what so ever. It is
by essence a "my child could have done that" painting.

To further drive the point home - the most expensive photograph ever sold is
the "Reihn II" by Andreas Gursky:

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02052/Rhein_II_2052673b.jpg

Anyone looking at that and think that requires any skill what so ever is
fooling themselves. Apart from the print being huge, it could obviously been
taken by any smart phone and the press of a button.

"Art" isn't about skill, it's about what people think about your creations.


It is about both, yes there are exceptions, but I have stated a general
rule.


--
PeterN

On 1/16/2016 1:05 PM, Davoud wrote:
MC:
Does scribbling on paper with a pencil make you an artist?
Does frying an egg make you a chef?

This is a false analogy. One needn't be a master at drawing or cooking
to be called an artist or a cook. The word "chef" is a bit too
nebulous. I take it to be someone who gets paid for being a cook, and
calling someone a chef does not make them a good cook.

I think you can only be called a "photographer" if you can show that
you have technical skills as such and that the images you create over a
period of time show a consistancy of skill and planning (one image does
not a photograper make). Otherwise you are just someone who takes a
picture, same as someone who cooks dinner is a just someone who can
cook and someone who scribbles on paper is just someone who can use a
pencil.

How smug, how elitist. A person who makes one photograph in their life
is probably not a photographer. But a person who regularly makes
photographs, be they spectacular landscapes a la Ansel Adams, studio
portraits of the rich and famous a la Karsh, or blurry snapshots of the
family and pets, is a photographer.


If the utterer clearly intended to use the term photographers as only
good or better photographers, would you consider that too, to be
pretentious?

I maintain that Ansel Adams, although a great landscape photographer,
would have been a lousy event photographer. A different skill set is
required for different types of photography.



--
PeterN

On 1/16/2016 4:21 PM, Sandman wrote:

snip

It's more of a consensus thing rather than a declarative thing. IF enough
people consider your creation to have artistic value, then it is art. If YOU
consider it to have artistic value and no one is agreeing with you, then it is
not.


Are you saying that none of the works we consider masterpieces, whether
it be graphical art, or musical art, were not almost universally panned
at debut?




--
PeterN

In article , Mayayana wrote:

"Art" isn't about skill, it's about what people think about your
creations.

So it's a way to impress people?

I suppose that for some it could be - but that doesn't make it art. If enough
people think your work has artistic value, then it's art. Simple, ey?

Isn't that pretentious?

Only if it is undeserved. I think any artist would agree that they need to
push onward with their work with one of the intentions being to please an
audience instead of just themselves. Sure, some only make art that they
themselves like and it just so happens that others like it as well, but if
you're going to make a living as an artist, the taste and appreciation of
others is an important factor.

That's not the type of pretentiousness I was in reference to earlier, though.

I wouldn't say that art is about skill, but one does need to develop
the skills of a particular art form in order to work in it.

More or less. Some artforms require lots of skill to garner the attention of
people, like race car driving or playing hockey. But photography, like I
said, have removed many of the technical hurdles that one needed to excel in
in order to make great images.

Beyond that, maybe your definitions define the thing. If you don't
regard art as anything more than people "liking" your work or not,
then I guess that means you don't think art has any notable value.

"Like" has notable value. If people "like" your art enough to pay you money
for it, then your art obviously have monetary value. Art can obviously have
other values, like documentary values, especially with reproductive art like
photographs or portrait paintings, sculpts etc etc.

It's an interesting issue. I think of it a lot like "love" or
"faith". We have many words that imply transcendent values but are
also used to mean many other things. Love can be great compassion or
it can be mere sexual attraction. Faith can be spiritual realization
or mere blind belief. Dogs playing poker could be art, in the sense
that it's a graphical representation. But that's art only in a
technical sense.

Well, I personally disagree that there is any "technical sense" to the word
"art", since the word can not be quantified or qualified.

I.e. if "Dogs playing poker" is art by some quantifiable parameters, then I
could write a computer program that created a painting based on those
parameters and presto - art.

Art is more of an emotion, where the viewer perceives and receives an emotion
from any given work that may or may not be the creators intent, which is
irrelevant. And as such, "art" needn't be quantified or seen as a recipe. If
it evokes an emotion, then to you it has an artistic value. If it evokes an
emotion from a lot of people, then they all agree with you and then it can be
called art.

Political or social statements, likewise, may be rendered in
artistic media, but they don't approach true Art. Then there's Art
with a capital "A", which implies a work that goes beyond the artist
to express something profound about human experience. Sacredness. An
expression of wisdom. Do you not recognize such an art?

I do not recognize "true" or "false" art. It's either art or not, I may
dislike one more over the other, but it's not "truer" as a result.



--
Sandman

In article , PeterN wrote:

Mayayana:
Is it inherently pretentious to practice an art form
and see it that way?

Sandman:
No, it is pretentious to say that person A is an artist and person
B is not just because you dislike the method, the result or
anything in between.

I don't think that without more, the label "pretentious" can be
applied to the situation you describe. For example, I used to know
an art dealer who would convince his clients that certain artists
were up and coming. The price of those artists work therefore
increased. I had spoken with some art expert friends of mine, who
stated unconditionally that those pieces were worthless. The
purchasers regarded them as art. T think the dealer really
considered his customers marks. I knew some of those purchasers and
consider them to be pretentious A-holes. There is a commercial for
wines, showing a pretentious wine customer defining Pinot Noir, as
meaning peanut of the night. Pretentious is when one has know real
knowledge, and is trying to convince others that he/she is a shrewd
authority.

Indeed, such as when a photographer would claim that one is not a "real"
photographer unless you use specific equipment or methods. That's being
pretentious.

Sandman:
Some artforms require lots of skill, which means that the artist
has spent years and years practicing. But some artforms doesn't
require much technical skill. Photography certainly did require
skill in the early days. You needed to know how a camera worked in
order to produce an image.

Usually, one still needs a certain degree of skill to consistently
produce decent images.

Not when it comes to camera equipment, not in a way that could be compared to
the days of yore. Anyone with a smartphone can take awesome photos with the
press of a button. The only "skill" involved may be that of composition,
opportunity and the intention to create a thoughtful, thought provoking or
emotional rendition of what he or she saw.

Camera tech has come such a long way that you needn't know much about the
equipment in order to create stunning photos consistently.

snip "innate" rubbish


--
Sandman

In article , Tony Cooper wrote:

Sandman:
Jackson Pollock is a good example, his "number 5" painting is
the most expensive painting ever sold, and required exactly no
skill what so ever. It is by essence a "my child could have done
that" painting.

Savageduck:
Regarding that statement I would ask, have you ever got up close
to one of the Pollock paint drip works?

The statement that to create "Number 5" required no skill reminds me
of nospam's contention that there is no such thing as an accident
and Sandman's earlier claim that there is no such thing as natural
talent.

Yet, if there was no skill involved in creating the painting it must
have been the result of either an accident or natural undeveloped
talent. Skill is the result of practice, you know.

Pouring paint requires no skill, Tony. If you're saying differently then you're
fooling yourself.

And it's not like I'm complaining, Pollocks obviously found a technique that
was super easy to perform and resonated with lots of people. More power to him.
But he didn't leverage any technical skills when making the paintings. And
that's just fine.

There was this guy a decade ago that poured paint in front of the exhaust of a
jet engine, making the paint splash randomly over a white canvas. It sold for
lots and lots of money because it was different.

And the randomness of Pollocks and that artist is emotional to some, emotions
that by their very nature was never the intention of the artists, which is
amazing in itself. And probably a huge part of why they are considered art.

--
Sandman