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The first in a series of three articles on assessing your own level of skill, both technically and aesthetically is now at Luminous Landscape.
Article one discusses some fairly arbitrary levels of skill I came up with which none the less will I think give you a useful idea of how you are doing.
Since personal bias is an issue, article two goes on to talk about how you might go about getting some help assessing your level.
Since it's of only minor help to know where you are at, if you can't figure out where to go and how to get there, article three discusses some ideas of what to do with the information gathered in parts one and two, hopefully leading to more rapid improvement in your images.
All three are written though the third article needs significant polishing and I don't know what Michael's schedule is for printing the others (he doesn't even have them yet so I'm guessing not until he's back).
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12 comments:
Hi George,
Good first installment, kudos for taking on the slippery subject area of "aesthetic quality". Will reading the entire series help me understand why a local gallery was able to get away with selling some slightly out-of-focus images of chicken fetus's in a jar for 4 figures? :-)
Are those new images from your west coast trip? (shipsbow, shore&log) love 'em!
BTW I owe you for 1 ft. of the Moab paper, needed to print something a few weeks ago and didn't have sufficient stock of my own.
Ken
George,
I like your article. I also like your Print of the Month offer. But the website doesn't say how large the prints are. Can I assume they're 48"x48"? If so, how could I say no to $40?
:-)
Andy Frazer
http://gorillasites.blogspot.com
Ha ha, nice try Andy. But as George states on his site, the prints are made on the Epson 4000 - which only goes to 17" wide. You're right though, size isn't stated - gotcha George.
Ken
Great article George, ive just had a look and maybe what I consider my level in both may not be what others do but it certainly showed me that im not at level one anymore.
Great article on LL. I'll be looking forward to the next installment.
Bill
Ah, 4F again
Hi George,
This was an excellent article - I'm looking forward to your follow-ups.
Cheers, Huw
Hello George,
I just read your article on LL; well done. Based on my understanding of article one I'd say I'm a 4.5-E. I look forward to reading the next two articles on the subject. Hopefully they'll help boost me to the next level.
Outstanding blog and photography you have here, by the way. :)
- Jarrad
George,
Good to f ind your blog and your LL piece. Takes me back to good times with Michael, Chris and all in Muskoka a couple years ago. Good to make electronic contact. I still have your magnificent stitch image on the wall by a Sexton, an Adams, a Tice and a Reichmann.
jack
Nice article on LL and a nice blog also. thanks for putting so much effort into helping us neophytes along.
I am reminded of a scene in the movie "dead poets society" where robin williams (in one of his best performances) is a teacher of english at a posh private school, and is talking to a class about a theory which enables one to evaluate the value of a piece of poetry.
the theory goes like this.
the value of a piece of writing can calculated mathematically, by drawing a graph:
s |
c |.........
o | .
r | value .
e | .
+---------------
seriousness --->
the horiziontal axis represents the seriousness or worthiness of the aims of the piece, and the vertical axis how well the piece scores in its achievement of those aims; the value of the piece can then be calculated by the area under the rectangle created by drawing lines from those points on the graph.
a sonnet by bill shakespeare would score high on both axes & have a high "value", but a poem by byron although high on the vertical scale, would score low on the seriousness scale & hence have only an average overall "value" (these are the actual examples used in the scene in the movie).
I will leave it to the reader to research what happens next in the movie scene, and to guess what my opinion might be.
regards, mark (m dot taylor at sheffield dot ac dot uk)
from the preview I can see that the graph has been distorted slightly, but I hope you can still understand it.
I'm always troubled by discussions of aesthetics. In the art world many times saleability is used to promote a style or artist. What was once considered high art is, at a later time, consider kitsch and vice versa.
Getting approval from others may just mean that your work is easily understandable and not very original. It's one thing if you are trying to make money from your efforts, in that case you are a slave to the market, but if you are doing it for yourself then the criteria has to be one that is self determined.
You may like my little essay on my development of "Conceptual Photography".
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