>From: "William Robb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >In this case, a cigar is just a cigar. The three people I mentioned came to >mind simply because they are regular posters and their work is mostly >dissimilar to each others' work. >No insult intended or entertained in this instance. > >Judging photographs is a subjective activity. There are no goal posts to >tell if a point has been scored, no real way of objectifying the quality of >the image. >If you like it, you like it, if you don't, you don't. >One may be able to say why they like or dislike an image, one may be able >to >apply the classic rules of composition and use that as a measuring stick to >say whether the composition works or not, but this isn't necessarily a >reliable measure. >What happens though, if an image breaks every compositional rule, and still >works? Is the image wrong?, or are the rules wrong? >Or is the viewer wrong?
Nope. >I've worked as a contest judge. I don't know if this makes me better at >deciding if a picture is worthy or not, but it does give me some practical >experience at doing it. Does it mean I know every rule there is to know? >Hardly. >Does it make me a better photographer than the people whose work I was >judging? >Maybe, maybe not, though I think not for the ones who 's work I liked. >It just meant that a group of peers decided that I was qualified to look at >a bunch of pictures and put ribbons on the ones I liked best. > >We saw an image from Tom C a few days ago, a picture which is as good as >anything I have seen anywhere anytime, by anybody. >Did it obey the rules of composition? Frankly, I don't know or care. All I >know was that I was gobsmacked when I saw it, and I didn't see any point in >dismantling it to see if it followed the "rules". > Hey thanks. I didn't know you were gobsmacked! :-) >A while later, he posted another one which I thought wasn't as strong an >image, but I thought it had some potential, so I took it and played with it >a bit. In turn, this caused Tom to revisit it himself. >Personally, I didn't like either of his renderings as much as my own, but >this is just one man's opinion. > I'm glad you did. Actually I'm still going back to it and reprocessing it all over again starting with the RAW conversion, in case I messed myself up along the way. I think there might be more there than I got out of it... hopefully. >Does this mean I think he is getting worse, rather than better? Not at all. >Growth happens over time, years, not days is the measure for this. Decades. Then why am I getting shorter? > >Even the descriptives we use is subjective, and open to interpretation. >I will use excellent as a descriptive, Jens will use brilliant. >Is one more descriptive than the other? It's hard to say, as it depends on >the vocabulary of the reviewer as much as anything else. >One person will politely say the image leaves them cold, someone cruder >will >just say the picture sucks. >Ultimately, they are saying the same thing, and may be saying it with the >same degree of conviction as well. > >Well, that was a bit of a ramble. > >William Robb > You're just a ramblin' man. Comments interspersed by Tom C. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
