As I'm just starting to get back into taking pictures again, I get to wondering, "is a picture like this just a picture of a pretty scene or is it art?". Tell me what you think. Is being a good photographer just visualizing the scene and capturing it? What would make my nice "pictures" become "art"? I'm eager to learn.
The answer to youre question, is,, yes its art, The Art of Photografy is whanting it what you whant it to be, and what you can do with what you have. dosent matter what enny one else thinks, it you youre hart youre imagination and youre camera which makes it Art! :)
OK, you've asked for some more comments so you obviously don't want to hear "great capture", so here goes...
Firstly, this isn't a bad photo at all - but as you've already recognised it's not a "great" photo nor is it astonishingly artistic. Even though Sue's colour correction has improved it, no amount of curve fiddling is going turn it into one.
To take this photo to the next level, you need to distil some of the "essence" of the place and manifest it with some emotional appeal. Now I've got no idea where this was taken, so it's up to you to convey that essence to me. At the moment it's a bunch of rocks, some sky and a few palm trees. It could have been taken next to the car park at the Port Douglas golf course in Queensland or just past the marina on St Lucia. Nothing that is special about the actual location (or how you felt observing it) is being communicated to me. Not all places have that - this might be as good as it gets here and it would take a pod of beached whales to add any interest to this spot at all, I don't know. A lot of great shots of ordinary places were taken by people who were either a) very patient and came back time again until something "opened up" or b) lucky and just walked into a scene akin to Venus Arising. In a recent interview, Henri Cartier-Bresson said "of course it's all bloody luck". I don't know, a lot of people have the ability to produce a third option, c) the imagination to think "out of the box" and pull something out of nothing.
Having said that, it depends on what you are striving for. Not every photo can be a Magnum award winner and neither does every photo set out to be. Ninety percent of the photos around here are competent images that raise a few smiles and a quick "nice shot" comment but nothing more. Most photo websites and all their backup tapes could take a nuclear hit and people wouldn't be that inconsolable about losing many of the photos, save the photographers themselves. However, there's only about a dozen or so photos (from people like Erwitt Elliot, H C-B, Don McCullin, Carol Jerrems etc) that I can rattle off the top of my head that I would take into a nuclear bunker with me anyway. For me, photography has its value as a continual, ongoing experience of people's cleverness, passion and creativity - most of the individual photos do not matter as much, beyond the immediacy of their ability to inspire me.
Remember what I said about emotional appeal - well tap into your own cleverness, passion and creativity and you'll appeal to people by surprising them. Climb up one of those palm trees to take the shot, wade out to the edge of the rocks or get up at 4am to catch first light but don't just stand in the middle of the beach and go "click". Otherwise you'll just end up with another "pretty" shot that makes an ok postcard to sell to bus-weary tourists but is still miles away from being a worthwhile exhibition print.
Anyway, (he said, pouring another glass of wine after dinner), a few more practical suggestions.
* As mentioned by others (regarding a lack of subject), the photo is a little unfocused in that it isn't "pitching" any particular element or relationship of elements to me. It's a bit like a snapshot in that respect - something to show people what the view was like from your hotel window. Clean, crisp and clear but almost completely soulless. I've shown this photo to a few people and the consensus is that the trees are the most interesting feature. So as an experiment, hold your hand over them to block them out. The photo now becomes completely void. Sure, this would happen to a lot of photos if you took their central feature away - but here this anchoring feature isn't even treated particularly well, as Becky has already pointed out. And when you remove your hand, it isn't as if the photo "comes alive" with the trees' return, as it does with the Editor's Choice photo mentioned below.
* Taking the photo when the sky is more interesting would help (puffy clouds, dawn, dusk) or not showing so much of it uninterrupted. For something that isn't adding much to the overall impact of your photo, it is occupying a disproportionate amount of its area. Which would be fine if it were counterbalanced against something else in the scene, but it isn't. e.g. when one shows an expanse of nothingness to suggest isolation, like in this Editor's Choice photo, www.usefilm.com/image/167139.html.
* Simply plonking a sunset in the background is not going to turn this into instant "art" either. Most sunset shots bore me rigid - I should know - I've taken enough of them! They'll still get loads of "nice capture" comments but that doesn't make them art either, just more pleasing to look at. If you did a sunset, I'd want to see the interplay of the varied light within the scene together with a sense of "remains of the day". How? That's up to you, I wasn't there. Stillness of the water via long exposure, a boat returning to shore, a child beachcombing with long shadows, silhouettes of trees etc are all popular devices but not necessarily unique to your location. Maybe a thousand soldier crabs all come marching across those rocks every full moon - who knows! But don't always expect to turn up to a place at anytime and being able to find a "killer shot" by applying a magical set of camera settings and viewpoint. It's a bit like asking a comedian to "be funny" on the spot. If the opportunity is there he'll take it but you can't always push it.
* The light looks rather like harsh midday sun and is also very even (the same) around the entire scene which tends to flatten the image. Not much variation in illumination or lighting and shadow effects to add interest. Some times of day are more sympathetic to places than others. e.g. www.usefilm.com/image/214743.html the bright sun (in conjunction with high viewpoint and polariser) brought out the coral outcrops here, whereas a softer light wouldn't have. But the bright sun (or its incident angle) isn't harnessed for any particular advantage in your photo above - certainly not with the water or rocks.
* In this light, the rocks look somewhat sunbleached and a bit like a man-made breakwater rather than a natural formation. They would be more interesting if they were darker, wetter, closer, more textured, something. This could be controlled via different exposure or filters or taking the shot at some other time. Have a look at this long exposure shot of the cliffs at sunrise. (www.usefilm.com/image/195226.html) In about another 20 minutes when the sun had fully risen, they were a stark, featureless wall of yellow rock and I was packing up my bag to leave. (This is not a great photo, its just quicker for me to choose one from my own stuff to illustrate a point rather than chasing around.)
* Maybe some unusual timing - I know the waves here are small but perhaps wait until a wave is about to break to take the shot. Not only will you get a more interesting crest shape, but another line to guide the viewer around the scene. Perhaps even blur or freeze this wave movement with shutter control. The waterline at the moment is quite dull and its relationship to other "lines" in the scene - the rocks, horizon, trees - isn't particularly harmonious or complementary in terms of structuring the scene. This is one of the simplest things you can change to give the photo more dramatic appeal.
Anyway, just a few rambling late night thoughts that might give you some ideas - or maybe just make you think I shouldn't drink so much after dinner!!
*laughs* I knew someone was going to call me on the "landscape as the subject" issue! I should have clarified in the first place.
Yes, you're right. BUT (and I could be wrong here - it's just what I think) all good landscape photos have something that stand out. It doesn't have to be an object. It could be a line (a road, a fence, etc.) that pulls the eye across the photo. It could be a colour that stands out. It could be shadow. In the photo you've posted here, everything competes and nothing quite stands out. Maybe what I'm saying is a scene isn't enough. You've got to pull it all together.
I do some of my best learning by looking at the works of others. Look in the landscape category at Usefilm. What do *you* think is the factor that makes the great photos there stand out? (And I only ask that you try to identify it because there's a slight chance I don't know what I'm talking about!)
Becky, thank you very much. Your insight is really encouraging. That's the kind of feedback that I'll hold on to. Although I have to ask, in a landscape, isn't the scene itself generally the "subject"? At least that's how I've thought of it.
Thanks again. My second day here and I'm already learning!
Richard - what would take this photo to the next level?
Sue - I don't see the blue in the sand, so I'm not sure why it's there. But, that's a simple Photoshop adjustment I can make. Thanks for pointing it out.
I'm going to skate a wide berth around the "What is art?" question. I spent an entire semester at uni trying to find the answer and I never did! It's an almost fruitless quest. To me, photography can be about what makes a photo a great photo. Myself, I think it's a combination of a creative eye and technical expertise, both of which can be achieved with a looot of practice. I know I'm still working on it.
So if you're interested in one person's opinion on how to make this photo a great photo, here it is: you need a definite subject. I'm not really sure what the subject of this photo is. The palm trees? The rocks? The beach? I find the eye needs something to be drawn to (and it doesn't have to be in your face or right in the foreground either - it can be patterns or lines or textures or anything), otherwise the eye wanders aimlessly about the photo and it can get a bit lost. If you want the palm trees to be the focus, then I feel they shouldn't be cropped out or "beheaded". The rocks, although prominent, are just a mass of rock. Perhaps focusing in on the rocks at the left - where they break from the main mass of rock and start to make contact with the waves would provide more opportunities for photographic interest.
Did you take different shots of the same scene? Do you have other angles? I'm wondering what a shot on top of the rocks, behind the trees, looking out to sea would look like.
Having a subject is something I'm constantly struggling with. Before hitting the shutter, I find it helps to ask the question, "What am I taking a photo of?"
I don't know the definitive answer to 'What Is Art?', but I know what I like. I like this a great deal, but to its detraction, there appears to be too much blue in the the scene. Everything in the image has a tint of blue, including the whitecaps and the sand. What do you think is the cause for this?
Exactly Craig, and judging by what you see hanging in the Tate Modern - quite a lot...
Whenever you start defining it, you will run into the problem of being too restrictive, subjective etc. Then again, once you start admitting anything and everything, it rapidly weakens and dilutes your definition. I think photos which set out to be "art", in some sense involve a level of "creative" interpretation, context or intent (whatever that means) rather than direct reportage. I say this purely to distinguish them from autonomous photos which could have been taken by say traffic monitoring cameras or automatic webcams. But even these have been used in collage on this site, so who knows...
Whilst the photo you've posted is pretty, I wouldn't necessarily say it falls very strongly into the art group.
0 
