What you're talking about there are the types of photos shown as examples in
books about photo composition, in which people 'obey the rules' and come out
with something competent but dull. Pictorial, essentially, in that the
subject matter is not important, just the formal properties. To get beyond
that you have to take more interest in the subject matter, and use visual
grammar as your servant, not as an end in itself.

Since very few of us are Henri Cartier-Bresson it helps to steal ideas from
great photographers and artists (which HCB did too, of course). To steal
this way you have to study the pictures you are stealing, and so you come to
understand more about how they work, and you can start to build on that to
develop a style of your own.

B

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pdml-boun...@pdml.net [mailto:pdml-boun...@pdml.net] On Behalf Of
> Larry Colen
> Sent: 06 December 2011 00:10
> To: Pentax-Discuss List
> Subject: Second order cliches
> 
> There are certain photos, or types of photos, that are taken so often
> they have pretty much become cliche.  They're pretty, that's why
> they've
> been taken so often, but so many people have taken pretty much the same
> shot, that not only has someone probably already taken it, they've
> probably done a better job of it than you.
> 
> I'm not saying that they aren't worth taking, like I said, they're
> pretty, you can learn a lot from taking just about any photo, and the
> opportunity to compare your work with others is another potential
> learning opportunity.
> 
> When I was on my photo walk the other day, I realized that a lot of the
> photos that I was taking were playing on the theme of repeating
> patterns, bikes on a row, rowboats, or canues stacked up, the "plaid"
> peso, I posted, treads on a tractor:
>     http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157628282737593/
> 
> I think that they are all nice photos, and it takes developing the eye
> to a certain point to start seeing those photos, but when I think about
> it, I've seen some variation of almost all of those photos before.  I
> realized that my photography has progressed to the point that what I'm
> taking are second order cliches.
> 
> There is nothing wrong with these formulaic photos, and most people who
> don't look at a lot of photos, probably wouldn't even recognize the
> existence of the "second order cliche". This brings up a question that
> I
> find interesting, at what point will I be taking "third order
> cliches?".
>   Or more generally, what are the different orders of cliches?
> 
> 0th order:  Just look at facebook. Duckface self portraits, or almost
> any self portrait taken with a camera at arms length.  The "posed" shot
> of friends in front of landmarks, or people drinking at a bar.  They
> don't make it to first order because they are generally done without
> any
> artistic intent, they're generally meant as "just snapshots".
> 
> 1st order: People are trying for a pretty photograph, and these are the
> ones that everybody sees and photographs:  Sunsets, light shining
> through the backs of waves at the beach, pretty girls in the standard
> poses, star tracks, HDR, and most photos that play with low depth of
> field.
> 
> 2nd order:  Repeating patterns of objects: bicycles, cars, shopping
> carts, skeins of yarn.  A moody photo of someone, or something on a
> rainy day, getting rid of distracting backgrounds by using lighting to
> leave them in the dark, or blow out the light in the background.
> Likewise, extreme cropping and detail shots, which get rid of
> distracting details in the background by not including them in the
> photos, even if it means not showing large portions of the subject.
> 
> Note, that the above paragraph pretty much lists most of my major
> creative techniques over the past couple of years.  What do you
> consider
> the different levels of cliche to be?  What's next? What are third and
> fourth order cliches?
> 
> 
> --
> Larry Colen l...@red4est.com (from dos4est)
> 
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