The Rules of Art (and photography) - I'm gonna tell them to you

[BrickHouse]

Art is in the eye of the beer holder.

 

[JoeW]

I disagree with the premise of the OP.

There are absolutely rules. But the fundamental mistake that people are making when they talk about "rules" and photography is to assume that it's a coherent set of rules that can always be followed. The reality is that the rules contradict, there are too many of them, it's impossible to follow them all simultaneously.

Let me give just two examples: a clear depth of field can provide a foreground and background which can help lead the viewer's eye/perspective to your subjective and they can provide perspective (so a clear and wide DoF is a good thing). Except that a limited DoF produces a lovely portrait by removing distractions. Wait! Those fricking contradict! Which rule am I supposed to follow? I can't have a sharp foreground/background AND a narrow DoF. Unless I'm playing with a Lensbaby with it's distorted DoF (oops, a THIRD rule about altering perspective and how it can be attention grabbing).

I'm serious when I say there are thousands rules about photography and visual design. Which do you use--color or B&W? And if it's color, vivid or faded? Or color that is tone on tone or contrast? Or complimentary? Or color that sets a tone (a portrait with lots of blues and a melancholy expression or one that is warm with a model who is smiling)? And if instead you go for B&W, is it stark with lots of contrast and dynamic range or muted/faded. There are rules about color (complimentary is good, contrast is good, tone on tone is good, absence of color is good) and they contradict. And of course we all know that sharp and distinct is good. Except I'd argue that one of the three best photos of WWII is a mass of blur and would be significantly less effective it were sharp and distinct and focused: Capa omaha beach Except when we want a lot of grain. Or we intentionally blur to convey movement (think panning). But wait--that contradicts the rule about shooting with a stable platform b/c we're moving the camera intentionally and deliberately removing stability. Folks I've just listed a bunch of rules--they're all RULES. But you can't follow them all simultaneously.

You see (and this goes to Derrel's point), it's not that a good artist ignores the rules. There are thousands of 'em. It's that a good artist picks which rules to follow (and which ones to ignore) with any given photo they create. That's what makes this an art. Not the fact that there are rules (there are rules when you drive your car but that doesn't make driving to the bank or grocery store an art). It's that a good visual artist looks at a setting and consciously or unconsciously selects a set of rules to follow or give precedence to (and thereby ignoring or deliberately violating the rules that contradict). When I compose a shot to use negative space, I'm ignoring--no, I'm deliberately choosing this rule over ones that talk about balance in the photo as well as props and settings that provide context and interest. When in that same picture I place my subject in one corner looking anxiously to the other side of the photo, I'm using that negative space and location to convey a feeling to the photo and I'm selecting it over the rule of thirds and Cartier-Bresson's "golden spiral".

We are not just geeks with expensive toys. We aren't just "lucky" ("uh, gee, I just happened to push the shutter at the right time!"). But a damn good photographer is an artist. And that means they create the photo. And why Mish and Lew and the rest of us could go on a meet-up in DC, look at a setting, and produce different (yet compelling) views of that same approximate setting is b/c each of us chose different rules to apply in that instance. And that's what art is all about. Is why Carravagio would provide tremendous detail in his morbid work while Renoir would instead make an "impression" (rather than a detailed replica) of flowers with lots of color, and Dali would put the flowers with a floating corpse and a floppy pocket watch. They were all effective. They were all following rules of visual design. But they all chose to ignore other rules.

Don't confuse photographic rules as a set of requirements we must follow (how most of the world operates with rules) and instead recognize them as a set of choices or paths as to what your art is to be as well as an explanation of why certain types of images or dynamics within the image impact our perception. And if you choose wisely, you get people going "wow!" and if you choose poorly you get people going "well, at least you remembered to take lens cap off." No-one ever ignores all the rules b/c if your photography works, it's b/c there are a set of visual design rules that you followed (either deliberately or out of ignorance). It's just that there isn't just one set of rules. Like I said, there are literally thousands of 'em. And the more knowledgable you are about the rules of visual design, the more conscious and deliberate (vs. accidental and lucky) you can be with your art.

 

[Torus34]

The OP contained a very interesting [for this pocm,] link: art 'rules', photography and ... language. My dustbin of a mind, stuffed with all sorts of trivial bits and pieces, started putting some thoughts together.

I'll start with children and language. A child, once past the 'goo goo, da da' stage, shifts rapidly to multi-word sentences. What's amazing is that a youngster, solely through listening to adult speech, extracts the rules of the language and then uses them in forming sentences. True, it leads to some humorous results from time to time. For example, the post-fix '-ed' is recognized as a past-tense cue and results in "He catched the ball." But that simply reinforces the fact that the language's basic rules have been understood -- and applied. Rule-breaking, and when to do it, comes later.

However, if we ask a child to tell us the rules he/she's using when speaking, we'll just get a blank look. They're known and used, but not verbalize-able! It's only later in formal schooling that the actual rules [and exceptions!] are taught as a specified system. Even for us adults, some of it remains rather obscure. Can you correctly define, say, a gerund or a diphthong?

See where I'm going yet? Think photography.

We learn, as we go along, how to make better and better prints. We can look back on our early shots -- the 'goo goo, da da' ones, and see them for what they were: first attempts. Our later work embodies several 'rules', though we may well have a hard time describing them in detail. It's only when we undertake a formal study of, say, color and composition that we understand intellectually what we've been doing, more or less, right along.

And, while I'm at it, aren't those instances when we break 'the rules' in order to make a better print analogous -- related in some strange way to, say, to -- irregular verbs?

 

[pgriz]

@Torus34 : That is an insightful post. Common usage drives the informal rules, which then get codified into formal structures so that we can explain what our minds have internalized. This is also the probable reason why people need to spend a lot of time at something (remember the 10,000 hour idea?) because that usage allows us to soak up the informal rules. We often speak of doing something until it becomes instinctual - and this is a further illustration of the concept.

Where art education and exposure to art plays a role is in giving people the exposure to different forms of visual expression. Some of these will result in a pleasurable experience, and will contribute to strengthening certain informal rules. The converse probably also applies.

The analogy to language is also apt. When learning a language, the more successful method is to immerse a person in the language, and let them struggle through the cacophony and awkward expression, until there is enough usage and exposure for it to "start making sense". I don't know of anyone who started with the grammar rules and then segued to fluent speech. And yet, in the process of learning, it often helps to understand the rules so to more quickly build up the mental scaffold of how things work in our minds.

 

[Torus34]

@pgriz: Yup! And, if you'll allow me to extend the analogy a bit further [Ed.: maybe too far!] a language is composed of identifiable 'chunks' or bits: letters and phenomes. Thus, it's already ripe for analysis and rule codification. It's easily 'digitize-able'. A print or a painting, on the other hand, is far closer to analog. The first problem we face is to 'chunk' it. Digitalize-ing the image into a string of 0's and 1's fails to capture the structures and so the process we use in language [nouns, verbs, etc.] isn't comparable to a digitalized photographic image. The same, btw, holds true for digitalized music. [Ed.: It doesn't hold true for scored music, though. But that's another essay, no?]

Regards, and good lighting to you.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

In my opinion, nothing says "I don't know what I'm talking about" more than referring to "The Rules".

Photography and art use visual language.
Visual organization using the elements of design.
Like language, the larger your vocabulary, the more accurately, and effectively, you can communicate.

The ideas that drive me absolutely bonkers, which are all too frequently put forth here, are "rules are meant to be broken" and "learn the rules, and then break them."
No. You will never change the elements of design. You can only use the ones that effectively communicate your intention. A horizontal line will never, ever, ever, be dynamic. Ever! Balance will never provoke a sense of unrest or discord. EVER!

 

[pgriz]

David, you do need to have allowance for people who also can't fully verbalize what they mean or think. It takes a while for all of us to understand the nuance and context within which certain statements communicate effectively. It is true that in the arts field there is a lot of verbiage that gets tossed around nilly-willy, but you get often a similar exposition by teenagers who often don't know what they don't know.

To me, the process of referring to the rules is part of figuring out what is important and what isn't. For some the "rules" are the convenient scaffolding on which to build an image. And yet, as one progresses further in that voyage, one starts to understand that all such rules come with a veritable list of when they can and should be applied and when they shouldn't. This process is not the same for everyone, and that list of exceptions and conditions will be influenced by ideology, experience, habit, convention and internal mental wiring.

In relation to absolute statements by teenagers, it often helps clarify the thinking by asking the followup questions such as "why do you think that?" "What alternative explanations can there be?" "What if...". In the context of the art discussions, it also helps to ask on which basis the statement is made. Often times, once one digs deeper, one finds unresolved contradiction or just plain ignorance. Personally, I tend to be much more forgiving in this regard, as my own perception is that we all are learning. Some us of are just further along than others.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

If you are going to teach someone a language, you don't teach them some other language first. All this stuff is taught on a basic level in high school art classes, using the actual concepts. It should be done here as well.

What happens here, is you have a bunch of people who learned "Da Rules" here, and regurgitate them to others here, and they often don't really "know" what they are talking about. So it perpetuates an awful, misinformed idea.

 

[bentcountershaft]

David, you do need to have allowance for people who also can't fully verbalize what they mean or think.

Like me. I've been trying to figure out how to effectively communicate online purely with grunts for quite a while now, hence my lengthy absence.

Also, regarding rules/guidelines/established visual techniques, the way I see it, the more you know the more you grow. I saw that on t.v. so it has to be true.

Also also, hi folks.

 

[pgriz]

If you are going to teach someone a language, you don't teach them some other language first. All this stuff is taught on a basic level in high school art classes, using the actual concepts. It should be done here as well.

What happens here, is you have a bunch of people who learned "Da Rules" here, and regurgitate them to others here, and they often don't really "know" what they are talking about. So it perpetuates an awful, misinformed idea.

I agree that it can be frustrating, but at the same time, it's an opportunity to point out what we know/feel is true. Some will accept, some will argue, some will reject, some will ignore. But the conversation usually lets the lurkers think about what is being discussed. For every individual who responds (in whatever manner) that are probably at least ten lurkers who will have been exposed to the issues and the conversation.

I do not have any formal arts training, for many ideas that may be for you very basic, are things I'm discovering. However, I am fortunate to be married to an artist, and in seeing her work, going to the art shows, and discussing art with her and her circle of other artists, I'm soaking up a lot of stuff that otherwise I'd have been completely oblivious to. I'm sure what I "know" is full of holes and probably quite a bit of misunderstanding, but hey, that's life and the learning challenge.

And by the way, I'm missing your photography. Would you consider posting again?

 

[unpopular]

Just because people don't "get it" doesn't make it "not art". Art is not about communication, it is about exploration.

If we can accept that each others' images are our way of understanding ourselves, our perception and our world around us, it becomes much easier to be respectful and accepting of each others' work.

Not to say that I always uphold that or that i'm always respectful.

 

[bribrius]

who make real art and has real credentials here? We need the real slim shady to please stand up!

 

[photoguy99]

I find it interesting that people are so willing to speculate on the Nature of Art without bothering to read up, even a little bit. It's not as if Kant or Duchamp has the last word on these things, of course, but these people, and others, thought long and hard about this and might, just possibly, have worked their way through a BIT more of the details than you did writing up your forum post on the subject.

You don't see people writing silly forum posts about the Nature of Peas or the Nature of Physics, but you do see it on Art. It's just one of those things.

 

[bentcountershaft]

who make real art and has real credentials here? We need the real slim shady to please stand up!

I'm a two time art school drop out, ('cause I refused to conform to their rules, man, I just needed to be free to create) so obviously I'm the most qualified.

 

[unpopular]

Only us art school drop outs are real artists. As soon as I graduate on my third attempt, I'll be disqualified.

But, I'll have a BFA!