What are the definitive Photo-Cliches of the past decade.

[Steve Gledhill]

... Web sites that include "fine art photography" in the title. If you have to tell us it's fine art then it probably isn't.

Agreed. The photographer is the last person who can make that assertion.

And images printed to include the frame edge, either real or even worse, digitally added. Can someone please explain that to me - I must be missing something.

[jp]

What is cliche, though, is when people try to make the Big Mac look like prime rib using the same goofy techniques others use.



This public-domain image is an example. Why tilt the frame? Doing so is a cliche response, it seems to me, to the perceived necessity to be original.

I rather mostly like that image. You're welcome to like yours too.

I don't care for the fake vigneting (another cliche). I assume it's fake unless he used a Nikon 18-200 wide open, then it would be real.

Most of the images don't show the moon at dusk. And if they do, it's a cliche style of photoshopping in or appearing to photoshop in a telephoto moon that is properly exposed. This example of including the moon is realistic for a wide angle photograph. I prefer the scenic genre of photos to be realistic.

In the foreground, the curves of the rock are displayed well by this composition. One of the curves lead the eye right to the arch. The arch is a curve, and we like to photograph curves, so it's a automatic subject choice.

I also like the little bit of snow in the background, the distinction between the three mountains in the background; a close one in the middle, far away one on either side of the frame. And the only cloud in the photo is glowing over the far mountain.

The otherworldliness is enhanced by the carefully tilted horizon. The scene location, horizon and sky all work together for that aspect.

The composition certainly counts for different. If I were needing a postcard of the place, I'd choose that one off the rack just to be different. My recipients would question me for picking a postcard that's not generic and normally lit and level.

[poco]

There's an element of self portraiture in any photo since it lets the viewer borrow someone else's eyes to see the world as they see it. That element of self portraiture has exploded this decade with easy digital manipulation that lets photographers show not only what they see, but how they'd like to see it -- whether it take the form of hypercolored landscapes or the desaturated garage door sized stuff you see on gallery walls. The 2000's was the decade when the lens started to turn more back inward onto the photographer than outward onto a subject.

[Richard M. Coda]

Here's another one... the BS artist's statement...

like this one I found this morning...

"He is engulfed by the tragic and ironic and uses the storytelling capabilities of constructed narrative to manifest similar feelings of this. His work often conjures spaces of in-between where the lines between several emotions are blurred and the viewer is caught between the desire to smile and to feel disturbed."

[Bruce Watson]

Classifying work as cliches is meaningless IMHO. The first real question when looking at an image is "is it any good" not "has it been done before". There is always room for improvement and fresh vision even in well worn genres.

+1

[rdenney]

I rather mostly like that image. You're welcome to like yours too.

Which, of course, reinforces my first point, which is that what we like (or make) is not cliche, but what others like (or make) is.

I'm truly glad someone likes that tilted horizon. To me, it is a special effect that distracts from the scene rather than reinforcing it.

While in college, I won a photo contest with an image of a bike racer that I had reduced down to Kodalith and printed as line graphic. I just ran across the 4x5 Kodalith internegative the other day. Pleased with that success, I tried the same trick next year. One of the judges taught me a good lesson by pulling me aside and explaining that we should always ask whether a special effect improves the subject or distracts from it, and whether it makes the image better or just different.

It seems to me that those special effects, when used for their own sake, are what become cliches.

Rick "who actually hadn't really noticed the Moon as such in that image because of that distraction" Denney

[rdenney]

Here's another one... the BS artist's statement...

like this one I found this morning...

"He is engulfed by the tragic and ironic and uses the storytelling capabilities of constructed narrative to manifest similar feelings of this. His work often conjures spaces of in-between where the lines between several emotions are blurred and the viewer is caught between the desire to smile and to feel disturbed."

Heh. I'm reminded of a journalist who, before becoming a journalist, was a trained trombonist on the orchestra audition circuit. Having had no success there, he took lessons with the noted brass teach Arnold Jacobs. Jacobs listened to him play, and listened to him talk about his playing, and then told him that he expressed himself in words far more naturally than in music. Any photographer who could write a really good artist's statement perhaps ought to be a writer, and anyone who can't should probably just step away from the keyboard.

Or, hand their writing to an average, well-educated but not artsy person and see their reaction. Confusion or laughter would be a bad sign.

Rick "whose photographs can fall flat all by themselves without help from bad writing" Denney

[Vaughn]

Even though I have sounded off here earlier, the more I read the more I am wondering if the use of the word "Cliche'" might be cliche'.

And dang it, this topic was a bit late -- I just printed out thirty business cards identifying myself as a "Fine Art Photographer". Instant cliche' -- that's me! Hopefully the people I give them to will understand that "Fine Art Photographer" means...Please do not be surprised when I say 'No' when asked if I do weddings or senior portraits.

Vaughn

[Richard M. Coda]

Even though I have sounded off here earlier, the more I read the more I am wondering if the use of the word "Cliche'" might be cliche'.

And dang it, this topic was a bit late -- I just printed out thirty business cards identifying myself as a "Fine Art Photographer". Instant cliche' -- that's me! Hopefully the people I give them to will understand that "Fine Art Photographer" means...Please do not be surprised when I say 'No' when asked if I do weddings or senior portraits.

Vaughn

I know... I've been using it for 20 years... guess it's time to drop the "fine-art"

[cjbroadbent]

E...Please do not be surprised when I say 'No' when asked if I do weddings or senior portraits. Vaughn

A 'Senior Portrait' genre! That's new to me. You mean there's a real market?