what makes a winning photo?

[tlc]

is it the photographer's name? leibowitz, avedon, maplethorpe, etc.

yesterday i was looking at an exhibition of a long time established photographer. he has had umpteen exhibitions and relies on his art for his living.

he was exhibiting photos from his 'punk rock' days and had some very good ones. sex pistols, patty smith, blondie, etc.

now here is the question:

in the exhibition was a shot of a female punk rocker, however, only 1/4 of her face was in the photo, the rest was just a shot of the stage. now i am not totally sure, but i would stretch to say this could have even been a throw away shot, probably an action shot, number 5 of a set of 10... you get my drift.

but it did work for me.

but did it work for me because he was an 'established' photographer and i was relying on his artful eye to make me think, hey, this is a work of art?

if someone on this board posted it and wanted it critqued, would we have put a thumbs down on it?

[Bu Yao]

The one who see picture make it winning photo.

[Croasdail]

I think most would have voted it down because largely the focus of threads here is on the technical aspects of photography rather then the artful. And this is not knocking the forum at all. In this kind of venue, viewing images size 800 px or less, it really is hard to feel the emotion of the image. Rather we can concentrate on those things we can see and work on. I bought Liebowitz's new book - many shots were not clean and sharp, but you get feeling from them. Much of her work too would be viewed as not being Tac Sharp here, too much noise (can you imagine running noise ninja on her images?), not well lit enough.... etc. The is just a different crowd with different objectives - not wrong objectives. Personally I find the computer a horrible medium to view art.

[tlc]

its really a shame more people on this board do not regard photography as an art - they would learn so much.

[StealthLude]

It goes both ways... I enjoy photography as an art, and try not to drown myself in the pixel peeping portion of it.

But I LOVE, and I mean LOVE to read and understand the technical side of photography as well. Everything from Film to Finish. Printing and Editing. Film and Digital. Exposure... you get the idea.

I started this hobby as a Graphics Artist, its that and my knowledge in color management and printing which led me to love photography. For my, w/o my technical understanding photography would not be as fun to me.

But at the end of the day, 90% of the people out there (excluding PONT members) can really care less about HOW and WHAT you did to that photo.

To them, seeing the print is the art. Throw the technical out the window and it becomes art.

Its for this reason I still pull out the Canon AE-1 film camera and shoot...