Beginner Adding value

[cebrooker]

I have regularly been attending my local camera club but it seems to have boosted my ambition but I still struggle to understand what makes a good image, the one thing that struck a chord with me was a chap judging one of our competitions repeatedly talking about adding value to images which made sense. I often say about people going up the Empire State building and taking the same photo but how do you make yours the best?

Looking on the internet you just get a load of guff about giving photographs "emotion" etc. All well and good but if you are taking a photograph of the night sky or a landscape. Obviously TECHNICAL ABILITY can create a perfect reproduction but doesn't necessarily make it a good photograph! Obviously this is subjective too! However at the moment I sit and watch critiques and my views vastly differ from the crowd!

Thanks again,

Charles

 

[Kodiak Qc]

•


You got everything right Charles!

An image must communicate, IMO, a minimum of one of
these three: emotion, story, technique (order is irrelevant).

Colours, shades, tones, compositions etc are only there to
serve that purpose… web or print!

One may sum it up like this:
technique skills + artistic intent = quality of communication.

Everyone is entitled to personal taste at both ends of the
photograph… making and viewing, it's all legitimate. Enjoy!

 

[viewfromthenorth]

What works well in camera club competitions tends to be different from the real world. What makes a good image is in the eye of the judges, and hence you start to get a homogenous aesthetic across the camera club scene. If you want to know what works at a high level then check out something like the previous entries here https://www.edinburghphotosalon.org/ContentPages/PreviousSalons as there's some very good stuff entered at this level.

Not sure what is meant by adding value in this context, can you elaborate?

 

[Nostromo]

I've learned from attending my camera club, that there are competition images and the real world images. Competition images are being judged against other photos in that competition, so are critiqued in a way to get a winner or points. A "real world" photo is for your own enjoyment or recording an event.
Getting all hung up on camera club comps and trying to emulate everyone else can stop you from taking photos. You end up only thinking is this going to score well at the next comp and the enjoyment starts to dwindle away.
I still like to attend my camera club and to enter comps, but i just enter photos i like. My last few entries have actually scored quite well.

 

[Alastair]

I have regularly been attending my local camera club but it seems to have boosted my ambition but I still struggle to understand what makes a good image, the one thing that struck a chord with me was a chap judging one of our competitions repeatedly talking about adding value to images which made sense. I often say about people going up the Empire State building and taking the same photo but how do you make yours the best?

Looking on the internet you just get a load of guff about giving photographs "emotion" etc. All well and good but if you are taking a photograph of the night sky or a landscape. Obviously TECHNICAL ABILITY can create a perfect reproduction but doesn't necessarily make it a good photograph! Obviously this is subjective too! However at the moment I sit and watch critiques and my views vastly differ from the crowd!

Is there a point or question here?

You raise value add and say it makes sense, but you've not said anything about what the speaker said to you that made such sense.

You give no indication how your views differ from the critiques you're reading.

If you want to trigger a debate, you need to start it off with more than "a load of guff". Marshall your thoughts and say something with meaning.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Camera club standards are one of life's mysteries.
we should primarily take photographs to please ourselves.
If they also interest someone else ...that is a bonus.

It can take quite a few years to meet a camera clubs top level consistently.
But to what end?
I am not sure my aim is to take photographs identical to every one else's.

 

[Phil V]

I have regularly been attending my local camera club but it seems to have boosted my ambition but I still struggle to understand what makes a good image, the one thing that struck a chord with me was a chap judging one of our competitions repeatedly talking about adding value to images which made sense. I often say about people going up the Empire State building and taking the same photo but how do you make yours the best?

...

To paraphrase:

Compared to a hideously narrow mindset used to judge images, this one guy who'd picked up a 'load of guff' from the Internet kept repeating something you found useful.

He had a point, but it's a point that's of so little value in the grand scheme of things as to be borderline trivial.

He was asking a number of people all aiming for exactly the same image to see the world slightly differently, but 'adding value' is b******t! How about 'look inside yourself' or just simply studying art instead of chocolate box photography.

The only 'value' we can add is to add something of ourselves, to see things from our unique point of view. Shooting Durdle Door at sunset from the same points everyone else has and then trying to 'add value' is such a narrow aim as to be hilarious. If you want to shoot something meaningful, ignore the cliches and shoot something 'different' not the same thing looking for 'different'.

BTW, should you succeed, you can expect that none of those camera club judges will be impressed, they'll probably not understand any of it.

 

[Alastair]

He was asking a number of people all aiming for exactly the same image to see the world slightly differently, but 'adding value' is b******t! How about 'look inside yourself' or just simply studying art instead of chocolate box photography.

I get the use of the phrase "adding value", even though it's a bit out of context it's a matter of how you define value. What might interest me is the definition that was used that made so much sense to Charles. Because I'm reasonably certain that if you take six photographers you'll get seven concepts of what value is in terms of the finished image.

 

[Meyssonnier]

Some forty plus years ago I joined a club as a beginner. Shortly after joining a senior member approached me and said, your trouble is you don’t know if you have taken a good picture or not. I agreed, he then said, print it up and put it on the wall for three months and if you can still live with it, it must be good.

I have used this method ever since. I look at a picture and think ‘could I live with this’ which helps me to spot the parts I could not live with ie wonky horizons.

 

[cebrooker]

Not sure what is meant by adding value in this context, can you elaborate?

I'm not sure, I think an element is in post production but also different ways to take a photograph of the same object or view and make it better than what other people do.

 

[Phil V]

I'm not sure, I think an element is in post production but also different ways to take a photograph of the same object or view and make it better than what other people do.

Which is exactly my point, why shoot what everyone else shoots and look for a tiny improvement someone else missed?

It's the camera club mentality, and it's a bit daft that you're lauding someone who offered you a view from a foot further away and can't see that others are offering a point of view from a million miles away.

 

[viewfromthenorth]

I'm not sure, I think an element is in post production but also different ways to take a photograph of the same object or view and make it better than what other people do.

It's about 5 years since I was last in a camera club, but from experience it was the stuff that had the most impact that did well, and this is almost always true of external competitions where the judges have a matter of seconds to view each image. For prints, attention to detail (contrast, shadow and highlight detail, sharpened, etc) is critical as is presentation (no badly cut mounts, etc).

As for the image itself, trying to define what makes for a successful image is nigh in impossible as it's all down to the individual taste of the judge. Certain clubs even brief their members on what scores well with different judges but that drives certain behaviours. If you can find a stunningly unique perspective on something then by all means enter it, but I don't think there's a single solution to your question as it's all so subjective, and a successful image one week could be totally overlooked by a different judge in a different competition.