are we just pleasing ourselves?




"....I learned my lesson well,
See you can't please everyone,
so you got to please yourself..."
 
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Hahaha...good one Derrel.

I guess I look at it like this. Most (if not all) of my photography sucks. My friends say I'm too self-critical. I tell them I have to be. My friends tell me they look great. I tell them thank you.

I know which photo is good by the amount of time someone spends looking at it and their reaction while they look at it.

A couple months ago a buddy wanted to show my photography to one of his friends so we sat down to look at them. As I was watching them scroll through the photos at flickr, they kept saying stuff like "Nice" or "That's pretty/beautiful/etc." It was when we reached around the thirtieth photo that his friend stops and says "Whoa! YOU took that? Bullsh**!" He sat there for a good forty-five seconds looking at it while he had spent no more than three seconds on any of the others up until that point. Then he asks me why I'm not making money at it.

THAT told me I was on to something. I still think the photo is junk but then I'm the critical one because I want to make more people who have no vested interest in my happiness stop and go Whoa! (like Joey on "Blossom"). This was that crap photo which for some reason got the reaction from dude:

7494291922_8e757181a4.jpg


So to answer the OP: Yes, I AM pleasing myself. It is to make sure I can pull off photos that consistently get people to stop, look and not say the usual compliment. Their joy of my photo will please me.

Is that even arguable? I mean it seems logical that a photo is good when it makes people stop and go whoa. It doesn't have to be EVERYONE that does but if it starts to be a majority of people that don't just say "beautiful" and then pass by but they stop and they make a sound other than a normal word and they stare at the photo for awhile, does that not indicate a GOOD photo as compared to just a good photo to someone who thinks any barely decent snapshot is a good photo?
 
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Tenacious D is like those kiddie music acts that come to schools and play in gymnasiums. Only for grownups.
 
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Really nice photos! :)

I'm doing a lot of editing down at the moment, 2011-2012. Way too much stuff almost. I found a very good article by Alan Briot on luminouslandscape about deciding on keepers, having a clear(er) understanding of purpose and things like that. Google Alan Briot keepers luminouslandscape and it should come up.


I'm not sure what is good and what is bad; i don't have similar tastes to 'the norm' (and that goes for many, many things, not just photography and 'art').

What i can say about other peoples photography is this...

I (personally) think a photo is ok if i look at it and think, i could have taken that...

I (personally) think a photo is bad if i look at it and think, i'm glad i didn't take that...

and...

I (personally) think a photo is great if i look at it and think, i wish i took that...




Obviously, it's a flawed system for me to use to critique MY own photos.
 
How many times have we heard: "One mans trash is another mans treasure"? I think that applies to photographers, as well.

As mentioned in this thread, as we progress in our photography skills, what we consider 'good' evolves with us. How many people are happy with the pictures from their cellphone? And weren't we happy with ourselves at just about 90% of the shots we took with our first 'real' camera? And do we still like those same photos today?

Pleasing oneself is the purpose of a hobby. Photography is a hobby to me. So I take pictures of what pleases me. As I take most of my photographs at church events, I'm also looking to capture shots that others will like as well...especially those in the pictures.

For me, the issue comes down to what shots are as technically correct as I can make them that others would like them. As I've stated several times here and elsewhere, what we may consider as a trash-can-worthy shot, may be exactly what the subject (or customer) may want. Never mind that it was underexposed, slighlty mis-focused, has lousy composition and lousy bokeh...THEY'D probably like it. But in my (too expensive) quest for 'great' photographs, I now eliminate anything that isn't as perfectly focused as possible, depth of field like I want it, and exposure and composition within the 'Photoshop fixable' range...before I ever import photo #1 into Lightroom! That's why I shoot RAW+JPEG. I may delete the 'great shot' in their eyes only to keep the not-so-great one that has good focus, exposure, etc.

But then I come to shots I take for myself. The likelihood of anyone other than myself seeing them is very small. Some have sentimental value, historical value (to me), or are just my attempt at 'artsy' types of shots. Certainly my 'keeper' criteria is relaxed a bit. But then, these pictures were taken with the purpose of pleasing myself, not others.

So, bottom line...all my pictures are taken to first please myself. For those that are intended to be shared, I hope they please others as well. Fortunately, 'they' are fairly easy to please.
 
thanks for all the replies. the issue isn't that my standards are rising (i'm ok with that). it's that my evaluations of aesthetics are shifting. In the end, i think it's OK to develop a new appreciation or taste, but that shouldn't heavily devalue any of my old tastes (thanks nycphotography for the Tartare Beaujolais metaphor, although i didn't know what that was!). this is especially true within segmented groups, where specific emphasis can easily propagate into divergent values (as amolitor eloquently described with the term "echo chamber"). In the case of photography, as i get a better understanding of the technical aspects, i will definitely gain an appreciation of the difficulty, beauty, and skill of the technical aspects of a shot. However i should be wary of using these new appreciations to devalue shots that i find (or found) inherently aesthetically effective.

why do i care if my tastes drift from the others? simple! because a lot of the time i'm shooting for someone else. whether it be an explicit relationship in terms of a client (paid or as a friendly favor), or in the fact that i create images intending them to be shared with others. It's not often (never) that i go out and intend to create a shot just for me to look at in a dark hole by myself. I think that's a huge aspect of photography (and in some ways art in general), it's inherently about being able to share or elicit something in others. i think when you lose that link to people, you lose some fundamental aspect of the art itself. there is a balance though, it's not necessarily just about pleasing others. it is about presenting your vision, but it does matter how others feel and react to it (both in the literal commercial sense and in the more metaphoric artistic sense).
 
As long as nobody pays me for my photography, there is only one person on the world that my photos have to please: myself.
 
thanks for all the replies. the issue isn't that my standards are rising (i'm ok with that). it's that my evaluations of aesthetics are shifting. In the end, i think it's OK to develop a new appreciation or taste, but that shouldn't heavily devalue any of my old tastes (thanks nycphotography for the Tartare Beaujolais metaphor, although i didn't know what that was!). this is especially true within segmented groups, where specific emphasis can easily propagate into divergent values (as amolitor eloquently described with the term "echo chamber"). In the case of photography, as i get a better understanding of the technical aspects, i will definitely gain an appreciation of the difficulty, beauty, and skill of the technical aspects of a shot. However i should be wary of using these new appreciations to devalue shots that i find (or found) inherently aesthetically effective.

why do i care if my tastes drift from the others? simple! because a lot of the time i'm shooting for someone else. whether it be an explicit relationship in terms of a client (paid or as a friendly favor), or in the fact that i create images intending them to be shared with others. It's not often (never) that i go out and intend to create a shot just for me to look at in a dark hole by myself. I think that's a huge aspect of photography (and in some ways art in general), it's inherently about being able to share or elicit something in others. i think when you lose that link to people, you lose some fundamental aspect of the art itself. there is a balance though, it's not necessarily just about pleasing others. it is about presenting your vision, but it does matter how others feel and react to it (both in the literal commercial sense and in the more metaphoric artistic sense).

I understand this and, without a long boring, probably pointless response, I can only think of one thing to say.
Divorce.
My first ex was still beautiful, very intelligent, well educated (I paid for much of it) and talented - and objectively I still was aware of it.
But I didn't care about her the same way.

Knowing and caring are two separate issues and it seems wrong to expect that you will maintain either values or affections without any change as you do.


Lew
 

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