The Art & Aesthetic of Photography
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Separating Snapshots from Images:
If you are new to photography, you may not yet see how photography is an art, as opposed to being a documentary device or a means of making souvenirs of events, friends and experiences.
Let's put photos into three categories: Snapshots, Documentaries and Images
These are not official categories but are three different roles that photos tend to play. Each role is important. Each role is legitimate. But each role has different priorities and thus different criteria for success. Note also that each category is not absolute — there are photos that succeed in more than one category. That is, these roles are not mutually exclusive. Also, I present these in a particular order. That's not necessarily to declare that one is greatest and one type is least — but, in terms of demands on the photographer, these three types build in difficulty. Far fewer photos fully succeed as images than as snapshots. But still, we need to shoot snapshots.
Snapshots are the most common type of photo. Every time I click off a few pictures at a birthday party, at my nephew's soccer match, or of the places we visit on vacation, I'm shooting snapshots. I don't care much about composition and form. I don't think much about lighting and exposure. I may shoot in JPG rather than RAW. I may shoot with a point-and-shoot camera rather than a DSLR. When I shoot, I'm not thinking about message, meaning, iconography, the history of art & photography or about semiotics. I just want to grab a memory and store it so I can look at it later, or show others what went on.
That's a snapshot.
Here's one measure of whether an image is a snapshot or something more: If only you and your friends want to look at it — its a snapshot.
When I take photos of my cats laying in the sun, that's mainly for a few family members that know the cats. You don't have to pretend to be inpressed by my snapshots. They're not that important. Snapshots have sentimental value to a small group of people — but are not meaningful or special beyond those friends or family.
Think about it... how much fun is it to look at 457 pictures that your parent's neighbors took on their vacation to Disney World.
You want to be polite and all, but do you really want to sit through that slideshow?
Will you be awake at the end of it?Let's be honest. The vast majority of photos that we see on Facebook are sentimental snapshots — not images. The photos posted on Facebook are selected because they document some event that was fun to me — an event that I want to remember, an event that I want others to know I participated in, an event that is meaningful because I was there.
However, the photo is usually pretty lame. Don't let a few fun photo comments from Facebook friends fool you.Most photos are snapshots.
Most people should not be forced to look at someone elses' snapshots.
When preparing images to show others, ask yourself: Is there really any reason for others to enjoy the images that I enjoy? Am I picking my sentimental favorites and forcing the to endure?
Eliminate most mere snapshots from Facebook and slide-shows. Think hard about what your audience is really interested in.
They will thank you by staying awake or by actually returning to your Facebook photo gallery.Now, there is another way to look at snapshots.
In the early days of Modernist painting, there was an affirmation of the dignity and the significance of the everyday, of the common person, of the ordinary. Consider the subject matter of many Impressionist paintings. About that time (1963) Charles Baudelaire expounded on the concept of the flâneur in his essay The Painter of Modern Life. Strictly speaking, the French term flâneur means a "stroller, idler, walker." Baudelaire describes the flâneur as a "lover of universal life", “…the crowd is his element,” he is a “passionate spectator.” Since then, photographers have explored and evolved this notion into a form a street photography which, on the surface, has much to do with a snapshot approach. In practice the flâneur's photos successfully straddle between snapshot, the documentary and the image. ( Le Flâneur | FlaneurPhoto | commentary on The Painter of Modern Life | commentary )
Documentary photos are the domain of photo-journalists, advertising photographers, fashion photographers, police crime-scene photographers and scientific photographers. These photos attempt to reliably record and present the visual facts of an event, subject or setting. Now — a disclaimer — the best photo-journalists, fashion photographers and advertising photographers do aim for and achieve a still higher standard than mere documentary photos. However, the vast majority do not.
Documentary photos are usually composed with attention to exposure and lighting, but the lighting is intended to reveal the facts of the situation. The forms and contours of the subject need to be accurately depicted. In contrast, expressive and aesthetic issues are lessor priorities. Dramatic or expressive lighting is not a priority. Basic image composition is a factor, but innovative composition is rare. Usually, the most standard composition formulas are followed. Thus, technically competent photos are taken, but only rarely are evokative images composed.Documentary photos, like snapshots, are significant only when you are already interested in the subject of the photo.
For instance, looking at a photo from a 1952 Budapest newspaper is not likely to be interesting to you. On the other hand, looking at a photo from this week's Harding Bison may well be interesting.
But why?
In terms of composition and exposure, both the Budapest photo and the college newspaper photo may be equally competent. However, things that happen in your world, on your campus, in your neighborhood are of interest to you — such photos depict places you know, maybe people you know during a time that you were there. Somehow, that matters more.
In this sense, Documentary photos and Snapshots are similar. Both depend on a personal sentimental attachment — the images are interesting and signifcant primarily because the subject matter already matters to your world.Consider wedding photos. Many are illuminated and exposed well. Some are composed fairly well. But both lighting and composition tend to follow a few predictable tactics. Virtually every wedding photo has been taken thousands of times — if you Photoshop out one set of faces for another collection of faces, and maybe hue-shift to swap "wedding colors", you could just reuse photos from one wedding for another. There is little original here, simply competently composed and exposed documentary photos. And, further, the images in the wedding album are of little interest to anyone but a few friends and family. So wedding photos and wedding photographers are important, but any specific wedding photo is mainly important to one bride and one groom as a momento of a very precious experience in their lives. Its not the image traits that matter so much as the event — the significane of the image is dependant on the significance of the event.
Documentary images may focus on subjects that are of interest to a broad and impersonal interest group. For instance, photos taken of the World Series are significant to people who are interested in baseball. Images of Hillary Clinton and Antony Scalia are significant to people who are interested in politics, particularly recent U.S. politics and judicial issues. The photos that interest members of one interest group will likely have little or no interest to people of another interest group. We care about the photos primarily because of what they document, not because of image traits per se.
In general, Documentary photos are crafted better than snapshots. The photographers are experienced; they have basic composition skills and tactics; they understand exposure issues and how to manage exposure via their camera's controls. But both documentary images and snapshots draw their importance from the importance of the subject — not from the composition's graphic qualties, and not from a unique artist-photographer's point of view.
The category that I'm labeling an Image encompasses photos that stand on their own — they are appealing, evokative or simply impressive whether you are familar with the subject matter or not. The aesthetic and expessive qualities are strong.
This description is necessarily open-ended and a bit vague, but this is the domain of art. Still, not every viewer appreciates every image equally — there are many issues of personal preference and sentiment that are yet involved in our response to images.In terms of pure form — shape, color, texture, line, balance, motion, space and so forth — an image is both dynamic and well-unified. Focal areas and emphasis, graphic hierarchy, eye flow and contrast are considered and composed for effect.
Innovation is important. The more familiar the tactics of the photographer or the traits of the composition, the less we value it. We want to be exposed to ideas and points of view that are unfamiliar. Expressive arts aim to introduce us to ways of seeing, ways of experiencing and ways of understanding that we have not considered.
In a successful image, the expressive objective, or image concept is well-developed. All aspects of the image work to support or express that concept. The image has a distinct purpose, and that purpose is less "personal-trivia" and more nearly "the human condition".
OK. That's a high standard.
But the point is, we're attempting to deal with issues, concerns and experiences of significance to people from any place, of any age, from any time. Snapshots and Documentaries generally do not accomplish this. (on the other hand, consider an outstanding documentary film-maker such as Ken Burns. Documentaries at their best fully qualify also as images by our current definition.)
It may be that no image fully achieves all that images aspire to be. We don't demand that an image achieve all of these traits concurrently. But we do pursue images of power that achieve one or several of these traits to a significant degree.
My role as a photographyer is to view the scene consciously, to consider the camera and the exposure thoughtfully, and to preview and anticipate the resulting photo. Our goal is not to take pictures, but to capture and craft meaningful and evokative photos, whether they be snapshots, documentaries or images.
Photographed Treatments of a Theme/Subject Project
Photo Flaneur Project
Other
Try a photo-video tour (in this example... 2000 still images set up as a video)
What other image categories are out there?
Pornography? (explore the Greek term pornia/pornea...which involves inciting a desire to own, control or possess something or someone.)
Propaganda?
Experimental Imagery?
Where would Nature Photography fit in?
What about Stock Photography?
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