Tips >
1 - What's a Good Photograph?
The Exercise
Jot down everything you can about a photograph in five minutes.
Critical Thinking
Direct your critical thinking toward the photograph—not toward your
critical thinking—or yourself.
Write down anything.
Brainstorm.
Don't judge.
The Goal of the Exercise
Most people see only the subject in the photograph.
Some see more, the gist of the photograph.
A few see and feel a lot more—the entire gestalt produced
by the photograph.
By doing the exercise below, you can be a level-3 photographer.
| 1 |
Subject |
| 2 |
Gist |
| 3 |
Gestalt |
Orientation
Make two passes through the exercise.
First Pass
Check off the
categories below that apply to the photograph.
Define the categories as you see fit.
The categories may overlap with each other.
When a single term is listed, consider any opposite terms, as well.
For example, depth includes lack of depth.
There may be shades of gray between the opposites, too.
There are also boxes for adding additional categories.
Second Pass
Jot down comments in the boxes for the pertinent categories.
Privacy
The checkboxes that you click, and the text you enter below, go no
further than your own computer.
If you move to another page, or close this page, what you've entered
is NOT saved.
Printing
Page breaks have been inserted in the text.
Use portrait orientation with the scale set to Shrink to Fit,
not 100%.
Here's a PDF version
of this first section.
Solar System Metaphor
You'll surprise yourself.
The notebook and time limit are like
a telescope.
You'll see a solar system.
We'll use our solar system as a metaphor
for a photograph.
Here's a summary of the metaphor.
|
|
| The Metaphor |
The Photograph |
| Type of Solar System |
Genre |
| Sun |
Purpose |
| Sunlight |
Reward |
| Gravity |
Tension, Causality,
Narrative |
| Planets |
Ingredients |
|
|
Lykaestria
|
|
Light from the Sun ~ Reward
Above, the sun in our metaphor is
the purpose of the photograph.
The light from the sun is
the something that lights up the reward areas of the
viewer's brain.
What's the reward for the viewer?
If you're using one of your photographs,
this reward may be different for you the photographer, than
it is for other viewers.
The photograph creates one or more
of the following.
Emotion,
such as pleasure
Harmony,
such as that from a pleasing arrangement of lines, shapes, tones,
colors, i.e., visual gymnastics
Thought,
such as insight
Transformation
Transcendation
|
Write about the photograph's
reward.
|
Michael Maggs
|
|
Gravity
What's the gravity that holds the
photographic ingredients together?
Tension
Tension is the photograph's gravity.
A good photograph has visual tension.
Paradoxically, when the tension is
done well, like gravity, the tension:
• Is often invisible.
The photograph is transmitted without
interference.
• Transmits a strong effect.
Causality & Narrative
Causality and narrative may also
be the photograph's gravity.
Our brains seek relationships and
stories as we go about our days.
We're looking for cause and effect,
which often is only a correlation, not causality.
We're attracted to stories and we're
story makers.
When we look at a photograph, we're
sensitive to the photographer's intentional, and our imagined,
causalities and narrative.
|
Write about the photograph's
tension.
|
Gustav Holst, The Planets
|
|
|
As mentioned, the planets are the
many ingredients that went into the photograph.
There can be just a few, or many.
The Pluto-sized planets of the photograph's
solar system are minor players.
The Jupiter-sized ingredients play
bigger roles, such as light.
Light
There's a section
below about light, the Jupiter
of our photographic solar system.
Color and
tone
Journalistic
approach:
Who
What
When
Where
Why
Depth, which
may be expressed with composition, tone, focal length
History,
time
Past
Now
Future
Technical
(See Camera Buttons below)
Point-of-view
of the photographer
Is the photographer absent, explicitly
present, or implicitly just off stage?
|
Write about the photograph's
ingredients.
|
Jupiter
|
|
|
As mentioned, light is the most important
planet in your photograph's solar system.
There are fours ways to describe
light.
1) Direction
Texture & Volume
2) Size, which changes the contrast
of the lighting
3) Color and tone
Time of day
4) Distance from the subject
There's a discussion of light in
Beecher's Handouts.
Go to
Light / 5.1 - Introduction.
|
Write about the light in the
photograph.
|
Draw It
Sketch the photograph, crudely or
with panache.
Drawing can improve observation.
|
Draw it.
|
Comet Kohoutek
|
|
Gesture
Gesture is the obvious, human gesture.
It is also an added 5% sprinkle of
something that takes a photograph up to 100%.
Gesture is like a comet.
|
Write about the gesture in the
photograph.
|
The next section has a more philosophical approach to the topic of
what is a good picture.
