Photo Equipment, puppies, Elvis and how much money should you spend on equipment

[AussieByron]

How do they orbit the moon, Mark? I mean, there's no water up there. Or am I missing something?

Very nice photo, in my opinion; artistic and well-crafted.

Ever thought about those missiles they launch from Subs......

Regards Mark

 

[AussieByron]

I think it is possible for a picture to be a craft and artistic. For instance I just finished sifting through over a hundred great pictures of mine to find four for a photo contest. I posted my top 7 on a forum to see what everyone liked because I'm not on the panel of judges. Granted, when I do this, I objectify the picture but people can still recognize the artistic touch of what I felt standing there holding the camera.

Honestly Longshot I agree.

I believe Craft is the skill in making an image or object. Art can be that emotional reaction by other people to the image or object after it has been made.

But to say a Craft image can not be Art as Puffer has so clearly put it many times is a contradiction to his own statement that art is in the eye of the beholder.

Regards Mark

 

[bvanant]

Lets use a definition of the term Art.

I grabbed this definition of Art from Wikipedia but of course if someone has a better definition by all means use.

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items (often with symbolic significance) in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, photography, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics, and even disciplines such as history and psychology analyze its relationship with humans and generations.

Using Puffers statement that if you quote a technique, style, and medium when showing an image its a craft and not art. It automatically cancels any possibility that it could be Art.



Here is an image of mine. Two different shots edited into one with Photoshop. DSLR was use and so was a wide angle lens for the Shark Suckers. I even changed the Sharksuckers photo to black and white to match the moon photo.

Now according to Puffer this is Craft as I have stated technique.

Now someone out there might view this image after I have told them about how I took the image and say "This image affects my emotion, senses, intellect". Could it be said that it is Art or is it still Craft.

Now if someone else out there looked at this image without know how or why this image was produced and their senses, intellect, and emotion were affect by what they see is it then Art or is it still Craft?

Remembering that Puffer has quoted "Art is in the eye of the beholder" or what the viewer sees in their mind.

For me personally it gives me a sense of freedom, the feeling of being lost, and even a feeling of friendship.

I would like to know others opinions.

Is this Art or Craft?

Does this image affect you in any manner regarding emotion, senses, intellect?

Is it pleasing to your eye?

Regards Mark

Mark:
You know where I sit on this argument but my first response seeing your piece wasn't "is it art or science" but "holy crap, I didn't know remoras could fly"
BTW it is quite lovely, I would love to see a big print. Just please don't enter it into next years LAUPS competition.

Cheers

Bill

 

[bvanant]

Another definition of art is "what people will pay for". Recently we did an exhibition of local (Southern California) photos by members of the LAUPS. Many really outstanding pics in the group and many that had won major UW photo competitions. All prints were for sale at reasonable prices (like $100 for a 16 x 20 inch picture framed and matted to 20x24 inches). Only a few sold, mostly a very cute picture of a sea lion pup that looked like one of the sad clowns that you often see on velvet paintings. We talked to lots of folk; many of whom liked the pics a lot but "didn't have a place for them in my house" or "the colors are wrong for the room that needs art".

My personal take is that I am still trying to get my mother-in-law to put up some of my pics but she still doesn't think they are "worthy" of her house.

Further, I think that the number of UW photographer artists can be counted on the fingers of a few fingers, not even a hand's worth. David Doubilet is one who combines perfect technique with an artist's eye (to me) and there are a few others (Paul Nicklen has a few images that I would pay for) but not many. That doesn't mean that most of us don't make artistic images, just that most of us aren't (IMNSHO) artists but rather photographers that have some technique and sometimes get lucky.
Bill