What makes an image artistic ?

[Ganesh H Shankar]

peafowls_stone_vgd1.jpg (161.15 KiB) Viewed 8955 times

In my file I have some images which look artistic (atleast to my eyes!) but I must admit most of them are not consciously designed that way to be artistic - often they appeared artistic after processing my slides or on LCD display/computer. I would love to design artistic images of nature but suspect whether it is possible to effectively pre-visualize and routinely make such images.

The questions I have in mind are what makes an image artistic ? My gut feel says it is difficult to describe but easy to feel. Is realistic rendering in photographic medium makes it difficult create artistic perspectives compared to painting ? Why then some images which are real yet look artistic ? Is it curves ? Is it uniform colors ? Should this be in our genes ( I hate an yes answer here) ? Can this be learnt/practiced ?

egret_fish_action1.jpg (95.06 KiB) Viewed 8951 times

What are your thoughts ? Please feel free to upload images if any to illustrate your views.

[Nevil Zaveri]

as far as i can see, composition is the most important element in an artistic image, the second most important key element is the play of light 'n shadow. pre-visualization do help but it also very much depends on the subject. things can be done and practised but to come-up with a masterpiece need lots of dedication, pre-visualisation and rather madness (in other's eyes!).

regards.

[nirlep]

Wow what a question to start off this discussion forum. I can live on this question alone for it has occupied my attention for a long long time.
It's not genes. It's evolution. Just the way movement in painting is. Realistic paintings of Raja ravi verma to modern painting; impressionism, cubism, absurdism, surrealism...for an image to qualify as art first it has to catch our attention. So it must be presented in a medium, composition, perspective, language hitherto not encountered. In a way it must do something to re-sensitise the viewer. Creating art with camera I believe is more difficult than painting coz " a painter has time to reinvent himself during the course of his creation whereas a photographer doesn't." (Susan sontag in On Photography). From this it deduces that a photographer has to have lot more pre-visualisation than a painter, lot more poignance of vision...

[Sriharsha Ganjam]

I have always been fascinated by art, and always wish I had taken up art instead of engineering and management in my studies Anyway, according to the Wiki Definition "Art is the process or product of deliberately and creatively arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions, especially beauty" Assuming this definition to hold good, can we expect to make Nature images which are pure art? The answer is yes, but its VERY difficult! thats simply because you dont have control in arranging the elements according to your and others liking in nature. Now any image whose subjects can be creatively arranged, even though can be classified into art, would sometimes take away the "natural feel" one usually looks for. But that said it does not mean that art and nature photography dont get along. Once in a while it so happens that the natural elements do fall exactly into place which would constitute for a great "arty" appeal. Now this means that one has to be there at the right place at the right time. So answering Ganesh's question on if we can pre visualize artistic image, yes we definitely can, after all we are making these images only in our head. Now for you to actually make that image in reality, that takes a lot of dedication, effort and most important of all luck. Because more often than not the natural elements dont exactly behave the way you want them to, and for you to capture them according to your liking you have to study the animal/subject behavior and explore and cover all the possibilities which could result in the image you had visualized. So IMO generating artistic images are more of a "Take" scenario than "Make" scenario (at least in my case!) and sometimes improvising on an images artistic appeal on the spot.
To highlight on the point I made upstairs I have my own image "The inner soul", which was pre visualized and all the props were meticulously placed and arranged to get the right image. Even though the image is of a natural subject in nature, it still misses out the key "natural" tag as it was not naturally placed like that in nature. So that would make the image "Artistic" but not "Natural".

IMG_2017 copy.jpg (79.32 KiB) Viewed 8861 times

Now I havent touched on the factors that makes an image look artistic. This, I think that is a more difficult question to answer and needs a more deeper thought and insight into the aesthetics of visual stimuli and could be very subjective!

[Ganesh H Shankar]

I agree with you all that at the highest level of abstraction composition instills artistic merit into the image. Going down that lane what in the composition gives that artistic feeling to the image? To illustrate my question further see these two images below, while one (to my eyes) look artistic the other appears like a typical BOS (bird-on-stick) image. I leave it you to decide what is what (I am fairly confident if we conduct a poll one of them will win over the other for its artistic merits). It would be sad to make artistic images by accident - that is what often happens in my case however

id_ex1.jpg (136.83 KiB) Viewed 8829 times

indian_robin_female.jpg (100.08 KiB) Viewed 8829 times

Coming back to the lack of control of arrangements of elements in nature I admit it makes our life tough but I also think there is our inability to recognize the artistic forms that exists which we don't see. How do we overcome this ? Any thoughts ?

[Sriharsha Ganjam]

I would say the first image looks more appealing than the second (?) But is it due to the fact that the bird in the first one is looking down? moving the vision in a direction opposite to the generally anticipated line of sight, which is upwards, due to the perch pointing up?? So if this is true then may be there is something intrinsic in artistic images which dispute the regularly perceived norms for that image(???). I am completely thinking over the top of my head now

[Ganesh H Shankar]

Sriharsha, I am with you on your observation that the first image is more appealing than the second. We may not go wrong if we assume probably majority think that way. I don't wanted to influnce such thoughts when I posted it initially.

This is how my eyes and mind saw both of these images -

1. In the first image, eyes traced upper contour of the bird, went up till it's eye and the eye led further movement down along to perch. A few more elements added to the experience - complementing light, bird sitting at the top of the perch, white portion of the bird. But none subtracted.
Important observation for me is image gives freedom for such abstract movements and without inviting active interaction with the viewer thanks to the eye pointing downward. If I can superimpose the (my) visual movement (hope yours will be similar ) this would look like -

id_ex1_contour.jpg (148.95 KiB) Viewed 8773 times

2. When I look at the second image, first I stop at eye of the bird since it is directly looking at me. Visual movement there after is not very controlled. However there appears a weak uncontrolled movement as indicate in the image below. Even if I assume the above same bird is sitting in this posture to discount color/contrast advantages the former may have I don't think it would have significantly improve the situation.

indian_robin_female_contour.jpg (109.84 KiB) Viewed 8770 times

Are then contours and shapes of these abstract visual lines and interaction between thse abstact lines influence artistic merit of an image ? Will colors bring extra dimension or they too generate visual contours like explicit form and shape ?
Are we trying to understand ourselves here ?

flower_color_abstract.jpg (109.02 KiB) Viewed 8768 times

I am not totally sure about that - it may not be that simple. May be, may be not...

[nirlep]

Not going into the graphics part I'll say the bird in the first shot conveys a definite intent whereas in the second one it is bird as bird; A bird in our senses which is without particularities. The first shot brings out the bird in its unlikeness to what we hold it as in our mind apparatus, therefore immediately fixing our attention. Things shot in their unlikeness is what i feel the strongest attribute of art in the shot.

[mallige]

I have just joined your group. I am still confused about the posting guidelines. I have read it a couple of times. I am told that it has to be creative,different and original. But I see mostly images that are 'different' not necessarily original. I also looked at the section which gives examples of what is not 'creative'. I see images of mostly birds and wild life. Is this forum biased towards wild life photography ? How is it creative if you get a shot of combating snakes that happened serendipitously ? Luckily the person had a camera on hand to shoot this' rarest of rare shots'. So what is original,creative or different about these shots ? Definitely there a bias towards photos showing wild life which in turn shows the bias by CNP photographers all of whom seem to be wild life photographers themselves.

I also get the feeling that it should not be a 'postcard shot'. That means the shot doesn't have to meet any aesthetics of beauty. This is what happened in Contemporary Indian art. Paintings that are grotesque,ugly fetch the highest prices because they are 'different' 'creative'.
So the confusion continues.
Would you call the attached photo artistic ? Or is it too pretty to be called creative ?

[Ganesh H Shankar]

I have just joined your group. I am still confused about the posting guidelines. I have read it a couple of times. I am told that it has to be creative,different and original. But I see mostly images that are 'different' not necessarily original. I also looked at the section which gives examples of what is not 'creative'. I see images of mostly birds and wild life. Is this forum biased towards wild life photography ? How is it creative if you get a shot of combating snakes that happened serendipitously ? Luckily the person had a camera on hand to shoot this' rarest of rare shots'. So what is original,creative or different about these shots ? Definitely there a bias towards photos showing wild life which in turn shows the bias by CNP photographers all of whom seem to be wild life photographers themselves.

I also get the feeling that it should not be a 'postcard shot'. That means the shot doesn't have to meet any aesthetics of beauty. This is what happened in Contemporary Indian art. Paintings that are grotesque,ugly fetch the highest prices because they are 'different' 'creative'.
So the confusion continues.
Would you call the attached photo artistic ? Or is it too pretty to be called creative ?

Hi Usha,

I think it deserved a separate thread - probably could you have started a new one. Let me try to share some of my perspectives. You may want to see a related thread here.

>>I see images of mostly birds and wild life. Is this forum biased towards wild life photography ?

This forum is for nature photography in general, not specific for wild life photography. Several of the members are indeed wildlife photographers so you may see lots of wildlife images here. We do encourage nature photography in general. Members choose what they want to post as long as it is an image of a subject in nature.

>>Definitely there a bias towards photos showing wild life which in turn shows the bias by CNP photographers all of whom seem to be wild life >>photographers themselves.

Do rare images count to be creative ? In my view not at all. We have made it very clear in the posting guidelines itself (we shared a rare bird image and clearly mentioned it does not count to be creative). Do we rate rare images higher ? I can speak for myself - I certainly don't.

>>I also get the feeling that it should not be a 'postcard shot'. That means the shot doesn't have to meet any aesthetics of beauty. This is what >>happened in Contemporary Indian art. Paintings that are grotesque,ugly fetch the highest prices because they are 'different' 'creative'.
>>So the confusion continues.

This is a forum for nature photographers who want to express their original visions or attempt at such expressions. It is not for documenting images of nature. An image however beautiful it is may receive low rating if it does not score high on originality.

While I am not qualified to comment on what happened to conteporary Indian art, what is grotesque, ugly are very individual views - so are views on what is creative. What counts (or may not) however is how many people think so. It all depends up on how many images/perspectives we have seen in our life so far - at least that is what I think. Personally I would love Black Square and thought process behind it than a beautiful painting of a photograph. Here in CNP we encourage photographers to show their own perspectives/creations than just beautiful images - there are millions of beautiful post card images any way. What makes an image outstanding in my view is it is both creative/original and beautiful.

>>Would you call the attached photo artistic ? Or is it too pretty to be called creative ?

Please don't get me wrong. Honestly, for my taste buds it is neither. I do think you have far better images of nature which are creative and as well as beautiful. One of my choice is this one. I am sure most of it is personal preferences and to do with our own taste buds.