Drawing the line between artistic identity and following the rules

[dennybeall]

The Forum is in dire need of a section where discussions can be held without the self-proclaimed comedians high-jacking the threads for their own personal amusement.

 

[andrewdoeshair]

I hope I don't ruin my reputation already, on my second post, but I think what I heard in the original post was (basically) "when can I break the rules?" And "the French don't get my art." Maybe seeking some backup from photographers who are excited to break the rules after his French critics made him second guess his deliberate choice to do so.
In my experience with hair, half of the scene gets it when you break a rule, and half of the scene thinks you messed up. But at the end of the day if a client wants a rule broken they'll sort of ask for that. I think if your customers are seeking something more traditional you should deliver that and be an artist on your own time. Nine out of ten unconventional haircuts I get to do are on paid models or on heads that I'll be rendering into more traditional cuts afterward, situations I plot up in order to produce unique content, but that 1/10 head who requests something edgy (most recently a professional model who was sick of being hired for old navy gigs and wanted somethings that made him unemployable by that type of company) gives you a shot of adrenaline and a euphoric state. Makes you wish your whole job was that cool. But then Monday rolls around again and you're back to the rules.

Does that sound about right?

Then when you're lucky and you break the rules in a fresh enough way, people come to you for that specific flavor, and you do get to do it all day long. That's like winning the creativity lottery, though, and you'll probably grow to hate the flavor you created.

 

[Tim Tucker]

@andrewdoeshair

You're (like many photographers) thinking of it the wrong way around. There is not "life after the rules", "there was however life before the rules". I'll try and explain.

First and foremost there is the human eye, which is attached to a human brain, lens and processor. The lens in your eye is organic and has an iris, so ask yourself a question, do you really think that the eye is capable of producing the depth of field and field of view that you see when no camera lens of more complex design is capable of it?

No, of course not. The eye is a relatively poor optical instrument, but is backed up by the human brain. The image you think come directly from your eye is actually a stitched, focus stacked and colour corrected construct of your brain from an eye that continuously scans the scene.

Next question, can you take a photo of a horse and call it a sheep? This may sound silly, but obviously no. We recognise if it's a horse because we know what horses look like. We have memory, we compare what we see to that memory and interpret what we see. But this does not only apply to objects, we don't confuse distance easily, we recognise a near object from a far one almost instantly, we can tell a foggy day from a clear one. We can tell sunlight from overcast without looking at the sky. We do this because our brains process from memory, we see and recognise the way we've seen it before. we understand scale through memory so we recognise a near tree from a far one, we see leaves in the near ones but not the far, we see the exact shape of the near tree against the far ones because we see and recognise the small visual clues that make them look slightly different.

Italics because it's an important point. You interpret what you see based on your vast memory of what you've seen before and how you saw it. It's instinctive. We also instantly recognise when something looks wrong, or differs from our experience of how we have always seen it in the past.

This is what is comes down to, and only really this:

When people view a picture their interpretation of it is based on a comparing it to a lifetime of seeing and interpreting real things and real views in the real world, an instinctive understanding of how things look from a lifetime of vision. We also instinctively recognise when something is different from how we've seen it in the past.

This is where the rules come from, because we see in a largely identical way. So they are basically rooted in "this is the way we normally see and interpret the visual data in front of us". They're a distillation of what we normally see and interpret as correct.

So breaking the rules is largely about challenging the viewers perception, not only presenting a different view but also in understanding how your audience will see it. You cannot just make it up as you go along, you cannot just say this effect means this simply because you decide that's what it means, you have to understand how your viewer interprets it, remembering they instinctively know when something looks wrong.

All visual art is really based on an understanding of how others see your image and not how you see it.

Sorry about the long reply but it can't be expressed in a short answer, or even simple rules.

Now time to roll out the comedians...

EDIT:

Then when you're lucky and you break the rules in a fresh enough way, people come to you for that specific flavor, and you do get to do it all day long. That's like winning the creativity lottery, though, and you'll probably grow to hate the flavor you created.

That never happens, commercial photography is all about understanding what the client wants. A "cool look" is nothing more than a passing fad or fashion, if your client wants it then understand how to achieve it.

 

[andrewdoeshair]

Thanks for the lengthy reply. Makes sense. The last part you quoted was based on my experience in the hair industry- I don't know if it relates to photography but only assumed it would.