At some point photography does get easier

[Buckster]

Whether you call them rules, guidelines, or donkeys, and whether you have them memorized or internalized or you just carry them around on an index card, when Wharhol comes on the scene and turns everything upside down, you pretty much look like a jerk if you get fussy about sticking to them.

Using Warhol as an example, he knew when and why and how to break "the rules" because he actually learned them first, understood them and worked with them.

He started out by going to school to learn design and illustration, and studied commercial art at the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design, where he certainly learned "the rules".

He then went on to a career in magazine illustration and advertising, where he no doubt used his knowledge of "the rules" to become successful and gain attention, while working out his own style that led to his ultimate successes as an artist.

He didn't just come out of the blue with no knowledge or experience of "the rules", start turning things upside down, and win the big prize for it.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

The vast majority of people here are not trying to set the art world on edge. They are not, and do not have they capacity, to intelligently, intentionally, knowingly, and successfully, give the finger to conventional philosophies of art. Warhol had a message. Who, on this forum, has such a message?

The people who post here are by and large trying to make pleasing images. Half of these people are trying to make money in a retail setting. So you can toss your Warhol example out the window. In fact, you can toss most of your philosophy out the window in discussions on this forum. The majority are here to learn, to get better, to make images with increased impact. Pretty pictures, if you will. There is nothing wrong with that. Much of this high art rhetoric can be saved for the few talents that wish to rise above the norm.

 

[Flyhigh]

... MY GUESS is tonight, you're posting drunk....it sure sounds like it...

You mean some people post sober?????

Is that allowed?

 

[amolitor]

I never suggested that Warhol wasn't a skilled artist, or that he didn't know the rules.

The point is that the game changes, sometimes abruptly. Roll with it, or become irrelevant.

 

[Designer]

In thinking about the so-called "rules", I realize that most are simply a rather clumsy attempt to outline what makes for a good image. The ones who made up the "rules" are trying to convey what makes for good art, but do it in a way that is easy to understand and remember without going into the philosophy of "image".

Nevertheless, certain tenets remain valid in all aspects of life and art. The difficult concepts of line, texture, contrast, balance, porportion, etc., all are as true today as they were at the beginning, and still just as hard to understand.

Teaching these concepts can take many routes, some more arduous than others, but the desired outcome remains the same; teach the difference between good art and bad. Begging the question: "Is there always some identifier that distinguishes good art from bad?" I believe there is, and it is built into the human condition. We can't always express beauty or ugliness, but we know it when we see it.

 

[amolitor]

The people who post here are by and large trying to make pleasing images. Half of these people are trying to make money in a retail setting. So you can toss your Warhol example out the window. In fact, you can toss most of your philosophy out the window in discussions on this forum. The majority are here to learn, to get better, to make images with increased impact. Pretty pictures, if you will. There is nothing wrong with that. Much of this high art rhetoric can be saved for the few talents that wish to rise above the norm.

This, actually, I find a little puzzling.

I thought I was quite clear about what I thought of the "rules", I said that some of them make your work look contemporary, and that some of them are visual tropes that make the viewer feel comfortable. You seem to think that somewhere in there I advocated tossing the rules out, and that everyone ought be to Andy Warhol, but I seem to have actually said the exact opposite.

Rule following is, in fact, how you make contemporary comfortable pictures. Pretty pictures, to use your phrase. Didn't I say that?

 

[Derrel]

Forget reading magazines, or books, or web based forums or ANYTHING written using words. Forget studying ANYTHING that has ever been written down in the entire 150+ year history of photography! Never, ever learn through that stupid old "reading". Reading is for squares. Instead, arrange to be born into a family with a talented photographer as your father, and then learn EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW to hold your own with the world's best sports shooters, all through the miracle of OSMOSIS!!!!!!!

Animation: How Osmosis Works

 

[Buckster]

I never suggested that Warhol wasn't a skilled artist, or that he didn't know the rules.

The point is that the game changes, sometimes abruptly. Roll with it, or become irrelevant.

Show me. Show me who's changed the game abruptly, and how. Show me how they break all the rules of design and how those rules are now irrelevant for everyone because of their "game change", and how anyone who doesn't follow in their "abrupt game change" footsteps is now irrelevant as well because of it. I'll be waiting breathlessly for your response. I love to learn new stuff.

Meanwhile, here's my take on it:

"The rules" of "the game", the basics of graphic design, haven't changed since they were established during the Renaissance period. The point is that even the "game changers" nearly always learn and understand "the rules" before they are successful at breaking them, and even then, they tend to do so WITH "the rules" still in mind and usually intact in some way.

Thus, "The Game" doesn't change overall. Rembrandt lighting still works, and works well, even after all these centuries. Just because someone doesn't understand how to use it because they never learned it, so they throw up a light willy-nilly, get crappy light and shadows and raccoon eyes on their subject because of it, and then declare that they're "changing the game", doesn't mean they are actual "game changers" or even doing anything worthwhile.

The same could be said for anyone who's breaking "the rules" because they just don't know any better. Even when they happen to get a lucky shot off, where all "the rules" are broken, it's nothing but a crap-shoot they'd be lucky to repeat, because they don't understand it because they have no foundation for why "the rules" work and therefore no understanding of when and why they can or even should be ignored.

 

[pgriz]

To my mind, "rules" are our imprecise attempts to codify things we find interesting/attractive, but usually do not give us the insight as to why that rule or rules help the image. And we all know that rules always come with exceptions, and a true master of the rules knows both the rules and most or all of the relevant exceptions. The beginner learns of the rules (relatively easily), but learns about the exceptions only with lots of experience and practise.

There is, however, another way of parsing this debate - that visual expression (and viewing) uses a "language" of accepted usage and custom. The language may change without abandoning the underlying structure that is intimately tied in to human perception. Just as spoken language evolves over time, so does visual expression and our understanding of it. Think of the stylistic change from the early middle ages (where the custom was to show images in profile, without explicit perspective) to the Renaissance, where images started to show depth, and surface contour. Think of the changes the Impressionists brought in, with their deliberate abandonment of the careful line and shadow. Think of the introduction of the cubists and later the abstract art - each challenged and went away from the conventions of the earlier times. Yet somehow, we have learned to see in those new ways, and to still think in terms of balance and flow and contrast. Part of the evolution of the visual dialect is the understanding of the linkage between the image and the meaning that the painter wanted us to see or experience. Certainly, the artistic objective of Rembrandt would be very different from that of Warhol, and there is no real way of effectively comparing the two. Yet, in each case, the artist worked within the cultural milieu and within the conventions before adding a new wrinkle to the way we see.

Back to imagemaker's intent, which was to encourage beginners (the term "camera owners" is a telling comment) to persevere because with time and experience, it will become easier. There is, undoubtedly, a whole technical area where mastery of the tools is important. However, to make "pretty pictures" requires some knowledge of the visual metaphor (ie, rules, expectations, cliches), and moving beyond these to "interesting" images requires an understanding of the underlying perceptual basis, and not a little talent.

 

[amolitor]

I never suggested that Warhol wasn't a skilled artist, or that he didn't know the rules.

The point is that the game changes, sometimes abruptly. Roll with it, or become irrelevant.

Show me. Show me who's changed the game abruptly, and how.

As luck would have it, I have another forum post on EXACTLY THIS TOPIC!

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/general-shop-talk/299367-fauxtographer-daguerreotypist.html

Which is really why these ideas are rattling around in my head right now.

 

[amolitor]

If you're making "pretty pictures" as Bitter Jeweler suggests (and let me be quite clear here, there's nothing wrong with that) the business about "needing to know the rules to break them" can be clarified a great deal. As usually stated, it is a meaningless blob of words that doesn't help you at all. A discussion of dissonance in a textbook on harmony, however, will give you some tips.

Rule-breaking is, in this context, an attention focuser. The viewer might not know what's wrong, but they can feel it. Some element of this photograph does not look like all the other photographs in which I am steeped all day long, and it has something to do with <whatever it is>. In order the make the viewer comfortable, in order to make them "like" the picture, you should follow other rules scrupulously. Give them a nice rule of thirds and a strong diagonal line and great leading lines that bring you to the subject, and then tilt the horizon to draw attention to.. whatever it is you draw attention to with a tilted horizon.

You wrap your broken rule in a comforting layer of followed rules, and you break your rule for a reason.

And then you accept that it's still not going to work a lot of the time.

 

[cgipson1]

I never suggested that Warhol wasn't a skilled artist, or that he didn't know the rules.

The point is that the game changes, sometimes abruptly. Roll with it, or become irrelevant.

Show me. Show me who's changed the game abruptly, and how. Show me how they break all the rules of design and how those rules are now irrelevant for everyone because of their "game change", and how anyone who doesn't follow in their "abrupt game change" footsteps is now irrelevant as well because of it. I'll be waiting breathlessly for your response. I love to learn new stuff.

Meanwhile, here's my take on it:

"The rules" of "the game", the basics of graphic design, haven't changed since they were established during the Renaissance period. The point is that even the "game changers" nearly always learn and understand "the rules" before they are successful at breaking them, and even then, they tend to do so WITH "the rules" still in mind and usually intact in some way.

Thus, "The Game" doesn't change overall. Rembrandt lighting still works, and works well, even after all these centuries. Just because someone doesn't understand how to use it because they never learned it, so they throw up a light willy-nilly, get crappy light and shadows and raccoon eyes on their subject because of it, and then declare that they're "changing the game", doesn't mean they are actual "game changers" or even doing anything worthwhile.

The same could be said for anyone who's breaking "the rules" because they just don't know any better. Even when they happen to get a lucky shot off, where all "the rules" are broken, it's nothing but a crap-shoot they'd be lucky to repeat, because they don't understand it because they have no foundation for why "the rules" work and therefore no understanding of when and why they can or even should be ignored.

But Buckster... he is a Blogger, sharing his wisdom with the world! HE MUST BE RIGHT! lol! Aren't most Bloggers self-proclaimed experts anyway?

 

[Buckster]

I never suggested that Warhol wasn't a skilled artist, or that he didn't know the rules.

The point is that the game changes, sometimes abruptly. Roll with it, or become irrelevant.

Show me. Show me who's changed the game abruptly, and how.

As luck would have it, I have another forum post on EXACTLY THIS TOPIC!

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/general-shop-talk/299367-fauxtographer-daguerreotypist.html

Which is really why these ideas are rattling around in my head right now.

I've now read it, and note that you didn't actually address the challenge I've put to you to back up your claims about the abrupt "game change" when it comes to "the rules" of composition and design.

So, for that, thanks for wasting my time to go read your irrelevant blog post.

If you'd like to try again, my original challenge still stands in its original post, just above. Good luck with that.

 

[rexbobcat]

I've now read it, and note that you didn't actually address the challenge I've put to you to back up your claims about the abrupt "game change" when it comes to "the rules" of composition and design.

So, for that, thanks for wasting my time to go read your irrelevant blog post.

If you'd like to try again, my original challenge still stands in its original post, just above. Good luck with that.

Two words.

Post-modernist art

Here is a dollar bill being blown against a plate of glass. Marvel at my genius. Lol

The new artistic trend is the absence of art. Haha

 

[amolitor]

Oh, you wanted to see an "abrupt game change with respect to rules of design and composition"?

I don't think I specifically called out "rules of design and composition" anywhere, I think that's a straw man you've inserted, my references to "rules" have not, that see, cited "design" anywhere, even elliptically, and "composition" at best by implication. Anyways, so claim that these don't change too is just silly, and the fact that I don't happen to have any handy examples on hand doesn't change that.

Rules change constantly, and you know it. See any artistic group or movement or project that achieved a degree of success, and look at whatever it was they were rebelling against. Group f/64, New Topographics, Street Photography, Pop Art, Stieglitz' Equivalents, etc etc etc. Lighting styles change constantly, what was contemporary and hip in Rembrandt's day looks old and out of place now. And so on.

You seem to be claiming that there are "underlying rules" of "design and composition" which rule all the movements, and that THOSE are really "the rules" and they don't change. In effect, you are saying "No! There are things that don't change, and those are the actual rules! Therefore, the rules don't change!" which is a circular argument. Even then I disagree with the idea that there are things that don't change -- if there were, someone would have rebelled against it and produced an interesting body of work breaking those things, which body of work would still be informing our work today.

If you want to repeat Bitter Jeweler's argument that, well, that's art, not commercial or personal photography, I answer: art informs commercial and they both inform the personal, which in turn informs art and commercial. When you can even comb those categories apart, which isn't always.

And I think that's all I have to say on that.