What makes a photograph "good"?

[Michael R]

The problem with an expectation of anything concrete here is the enormously vague word “good”. OP would really need to define such a thing with a little more precision and some criteria. Otherwise there is very little of an objective nature one can say about any artform.

[Bernice Loui]

Jonathan Haidt is best know for work relating to moral foundations_politics _!_.

Some of which, flat disagree with due to Haidt's innate bias (Scientific method is intended to limit this, yet humans are .... humans with all the innate stuff that comes with the human condition). Others, appear as astute observations of the human condition and very supportable in many ways.


We start to get into stuff like this, and how it might apply to, "What Makes a Photograph Good."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4RLfVxTGH4

Seemingly unrelated, yet it absolutely is _ how ?



Bernice

One way to look at much of art is that it's the attempt to create super normal stimuli. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3ObUIf9pcs

This doesn't just have to involve sex, it can also involve fear, hope......

Psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt tell us that our reasonable faculties are used more to justify and defend what we want to do instead of being used to find the truth. Many of our theories about what we do are nothing more than confabulation, an unconscious making up of reasons as a defense instead of explaining the causes of our actions. They come after our desire and not before.

In a way we're like giant jewel beetles trying to make more stimulating beer bottles. https://www.thoughtco.com/the-giant-...beetle-1968152

[Heroique]

J.S. Mill: It's good if it leads or contributes to the greatest net happiness.

Just for fun, someone please compare my math to Mill’s. ;^)

If a photographer knows his image will motivate a particular viewer to murder someone, and this happens, but the image also motivates four other viewers to contribute to social good, there is a net happiness of 3 (that is, 4 do good – 1 does bad = 3 good).

Another photographer knows his own image will motivate 2 people to contribute to the social good, and have no other effect. The net happiness is 2 good.

Of the two photos, the first has a greater claim to be good, yet it has directly caused someone to suffer a violent death.

Of course, this doesn't address the first photo's artistic merit. It might very well be a masterpiece by aesthetic calculations, not social ones.

[Peter De Smidt]

Jonathan Haidt is best know for work relating to moral foundations_politics _!_.

Yes, and....?

He's also done other work, such as the Happiness Hypothesis. See: https://www.happinesshypothesis.com/
It's a good book. I can say that because I've read it....a couple of times...as I used it for some classes.

Some of which, flat disagree with due to Haidt's innate bias (Scientific method is intended to limit this, yet humans are .... humans with all the innate stuff that comes with the human condition).

Bernice

What's the cause for that ad hominem? There something, unspecified, that you disagree with Haidt about. So? I disagree with him about some things, too. It doesn't follow on that basis that everything else he says is wrong.

[Bernice Loui]

Not everything from Haidt is "wrong", There is agreement, there is disagreement. That coupled with the innate stuff we all are subject to due to our human condition.

~simply that. Diving deeper, the discussion will wander much farther and deeper than most might want to read-discuss here.


Bernice

What's the cause for that ad hominem? There something, unspecified, that you disagree with Haidt about. So? I disagree with him about some things, too. It doesn't follow on that basis that everything else he says is wrong.

[Tin Can]

OK, bought the Haidt audiobook as I prefer to fiddle about

and listen to a book

never heard of him

but I do listen to Peter and Bernice

first define 'good'

then 'bad'

[h2oman]

OP would really need to define such a thing with a little more precision and some criteria.

OP here. At least a few have stuck their necks out far enough to say that there are photographs that they think are good, but that they don't like. I would challenge anyone who thinks this to pick just one such photo, and articulate what it is about the photo that makes them think it is good. I will step up to that plate in a day or two, but I really would like to hear from others first.

Or y'all can just keep spouting highbrow philosophical nonsense!

[h2oman]

The fancy talk has mostly gone over my head, but I did look up what "ad hominem" means. I'll have to start using that in conversation! I can imagine most people taking it like a passage I recall from Mark Twain's "Roughing It." These guys (including the author) are bumbling around in a snowstorm, I believe. Tempers are running short, and one tells Twain that he has no more sense than a logarithm. Twain replies that he has no idea what a logarithm is, but it sound bad!

[BrianShaw]

I’d rather hear from you first. Please… educate us as to your “good but not liked”.

On second thought… okay, good but not liked: Adams Moonrise over Hernandez. Great story, well-accepted, well-printed… but vacant and visually boring.

You're up!

[h2oman]

Thanks for offering also the why you don't like it - I was going to solicit that, but thought that might be asking too much!

But can you come up with anything other than well-printed that you like? What if you had no idea of what the story was, or that it was well-accepted? Suppose you had become suddenly ignorant of all that...