Thank you, manaheim, for noticing. I think unfortunately, the majority of the "discussion" was a red-herring.
There is a problem with photography – it’s much too easy to be seduced into “equipmentitis” thinking that a bigger/faster/more expensive lens or body or flash will give us the better pictures we crave. All the marketing is focused on getting us to buy into that. This is no different than the beer commercials where dorky guys start buying/drinking the advertised brew, and by magic, they are instantly surrounded by gorgeous young women. Or someone gets into a new car and instantly is transported (in successive clips) to the beach by the ocean, a stunning mountain top, etc. Now we know that this type of “aspirational” advertising tries to create a link between the wished-for outcome, and the product being flogged. But we often seem to forget that when it comes to photographic equipment.
When it comes to making memorable images, be they “art” or advertising, the true skill is to create a compelling story to pull the viewer into the image. The storyline may be simple (and in fact, simpler is better), and it is successful, it causes the viewer to stop and really look. A storyline is not conveyed by f-stops and shutter speeds – it is conveyed by the arrangement of materials in the image, by the skillful use of lighting to highlight some aspects and hide others, by the composition which allow the eye to wander (or not), and by the elimination of distracting elements (hot spots, obstructing foreground elements, visual noise, background clutter, etc.).
What’s the link between the first paragraph above, and the second? Well, it’s the “way” we see stuff. The eye is not a camera. Everything we see is constructed in our brains. There is a lot of neural processing going on to construct the “image” of the world we perceive as “real”. 99.99% of the time we’re not aware of this process, and we accept what we think we see at face value. However, things that interfere with the neural processing (alcohol, drugs, certain neural diseases, some toxins, chemical imbalances, etc.), make us aware that the process of perceiving the outside world is much more complicated than we usually know. One characteristic of this processing, is that we use visual labels for things, so that we don’t have to process the whole object every time we see something. This shows up in the phenomenon that we see what we expect to see, not necessarily what’s actually there. It also shows up in the way we look at the world, having picked up from our culture (and seeing is culture-influenced), certain conventions of perception.
As manaheim indicated, Van Gough, due to his mental illness, portrayed the world as he saw it, and at the time, he was laughed at because people just couldn’t connect what he created and their personal experience. Much later, when there was a less rigid way of looking at stuff, there came an appreciation for his genius, and still later, when we started to understand the mental processes underlying perception, did we start to understand why he did it that way.
Again, what does all this have to do with the photography? Well, certain clichés work because we’ve absorbed that chiche as a visual shortcut, and we instantly recognize it without taking the time to study the image. However, really good images break through that and force us to stop and really stare, looking at the image without the filter of our preconceptions and conventions. That is why deliberately breaking the rules can work – the image doesn’t “flow” according to the implicit mental rules. But once you do that, you better deliver – you’ve forced the viewer to work at understanding your image, and they better have a payback for their effort.
![[No title]](/data/xfmg/thumbnail/38/38262-10a9668da9a2b36a92cddde57caf87bc.jpg?1734172150)
![[No title]](/data/xfmg/thumbnail/38/38261-db20f6f92ee8f0d4c5cf1536e308638b.jpg?1734172147)
![[No title]](/data/xfmg/thumbnail/36/36680-2f2b1d32244516c9d5cf39af9b78b382.jpg?1734169174)
