What makes a good photograph---or what makes a photograph good?

[John Kasaian]

This is a response to Tim's post of Kodak's latest announcement about photographic materials, but I thought it might stand in it's own better than being added to Tim's post.

I wonder if I'm too concerned about the materials used in the process. Contributors here will embrace the merits of platinum or AZO, pyrocat or Xtol, Tmax or Efke(or colloidion). Its a matter of personal preference, right? We choose our tools and make pictures, but its the photograph that matters, right? Some tools are more fun than others, some have a different "look" than others, but when does the process and the tools used become more important than the results you hold in your hand or hang on the wall?

I'm not saying tools and technique aren't important, and it really gets to me when any manufacturer stops making a product I've become comfortable using, but the world still goes on. Great photographs have been taken with unsophisticated equiptment and chemistry, too.

Would EW, Karsh or Kertez throw in the towel if a favorite product went extinct, or would they adapt to what was available and continue making great photos? I wonder how many discontinued products these guys lamented over and for how long---or were they more interested in taking the next photo to stress much about it?

What do you think about this?-------Cheers!

[wfwhitaker]

Frederick Evans reputedly did (throw in the towel) at word of the discontinuance of commercially available platinum papers. And today platinum printing not only lives, it thrives.



While I'm not ready to run for fear of being hit by pieces of falling sky, I am hedging my bets and keeping a couple of 8x10 plate holders around just in case.

[Nick Morris]

Q: What makes a good photograph---or what makes a photograph good? A: A good photographer.

[Tim Curry]

Any concerns about supply should be addressed with the judicious application of money and common sense. Buy as much as you can afford to store.

Good photograph? My taste is in my mouth.

[Nick Morris]

John, I'd like to add to my previous post: an appreciative audience. But more to your question of materials, I'd like to also add... for many years I attempted to play guitar. And over the course of those years I played on a variety of instruments. What I found was that regardless of the instrument, I sounded pretty much the same. That's not to say that the instruments sounded the same. Instruments of better quality sounded better, offered more nuance, richer and more refined in the tone...but my playing, the music (?) I produced sounded the same. I think it is that way with photographic process. A good photograher will get his vision out of the materials at hand, like a good musician will get his sound and music out of most any insrument. The hardship is the learning curve; the time lost and the monetary expense. It still comes down to why we do it in the first place. Its not to make an Azo print, its to make a print that satisfies our need for expression. No?

[Bruce Barlow]

A really important question! When is enough enough?

For what it's worth, I think knowledge of materials (and equipment) is important to the extent that you have explored materials enough to know what looks best with your work. Once you know that, you know what the materials do, so you don't have to think about them very much when you're making the photograph. Ditto your equipment. But it goes not farther than than if your real objective is to make pictures worth looking at.

Materials and equipment use should be mechanical. Making pictures should be creative. Don't be creative when you should be mechanical, and don't be mechanical when you should be creative.

The best way to learn to be properly mechanical and creative is to do it! And isn't doing it what we want? Experience is the best teacher, if one approaches every experience as a lesson to be learned.

I'm much more mechanical in handling my 4x5 after making several hundred Polaroid portraits of people. I can manipulate my camera in the dark (although I don't often photograph in the closet). I can find every control by touch, including setting the aperture on the lens to where I want it, without looking. That means I'm fast, which can sometimes be a godsend.

I've got a FAR greater sense of materials after testing 11 papers in 11 different developers and lining up the prints to look at. I now know what works best for ME (not necessarily for anyone else), but that came after 40-plus hours in the darkroom making about 500 prints. I know what I like, I know what kinds of pictures I make, and I know what I like less with my pictures. Wow! That's a lot!

Having said all that, I clearly recognize that there are many folks for whom the processes and equipment are more the ends than the means. We often call them gadget heads, and in my old age of 49 I have come to accept them and welcome them. We all seek different satisfactions from this medium and its processes, and if those folks enjoy cameras, lenses and chemicals seemingly more than actually making a lot of wonderful pictures, that's OK by me. In fact, they'll do more to keep the traditional materials alive than many of the rest of us!

[David L.]

Q: "What makes a good photograph - or what makes a photograph good?"

A: Good content.

[Donald Miller]

The ability to "see" what others don't "see".

[Walter Foscari]

Most discussions on analog vs. digital resolve with the statement that digital is just another tool introduced to allow photographers to do the same kind of stuff that they have been doing for the last century and a half, only more easily, faster and more conveniently.

Does it ever occur to anybody that perhaps the differences are not quantitative but qualitative? That is, that digital photography is essentially different in nature than the traditional chemical process? And that as such it should be recognized as a new and distinct activity (too early to call it art form). Conceptually I think of digital and analog prints as apples and oranges. Perhaps once things have been sorted out, traditional and digital methods will take off in different directions and produce distinct results instantly recognizable within the range of the visual arts, the same way that a painting and a photograph are now.

Personally I can hardly wait.

[Mark_3632]

I was sitting in a coffee house, eaves dropping for a social anthropology assignment in Tucson while I was in college. An art student and an art professor were at the table next to me. They were talking about equipment. The student was raving on and on about a set of brushes she had ordered that had freed her to create, but the price of the brushes precluded her from getting any more. This seemed to upset her. She asked the professor where he got his brushes, he said Wal-mart. Whether he wanted to get the coed away from him or make a point I don't know but this conversation has always stuck with me. The tools are tools, they are what gets you to the final print or slide. I will not die or throw in the towel if film leaves. I won't be happy about it but as long as there is a way for me to create an image I'll be fine. Probably coat my own plates if I have to.

For me, what makes a good photograph is the same as what makes a good painting or other 2d piece of art: emotion.