What is it that makes you immediately like a certain photograph and absolutely dislike another one? You look at a picture you haven’t seen before and within a split second you say “I like it” or a similar expression showing your admiration. Another picture will have an opposite effect. I had an interesting discussion about this subject the other day. The person in question was a member of a local camera club for a while, but eventually gave up because she couldn’t stand the almost endless discussions on whether a photograph was good or not. In her opinion, it was very simple: you like it or not. Just as with wine. You take a sip and you like it or not.
Of course, I asked all the obvious questions: why do you like the photograph (try to analyse it a bit). Is it the colours? The composition? The light? The subject? Does it bring back memories? These are all very basic and obvious types of question when you try to figure out what makes you like the picture. It were exectly these questions that made her eventually give up her membership. It’s simply a matter of gut feeling. You look at a picture and your gut feeling or instinct or whatever tells you it’s good (or not). Without all the analyzing questions.
Against all odds, I tried going one step further. What do you think the photographer is trying to say with this picture? What is the message? Indeed, this proved to be way out of proportion. A simple analysis of your own thought might be do-able one day, but disentangling the photographers mind at the time the picture was taken, was next to psycho-analysis. Nothing to do with photography.
I think that with the huge amount of camera’s that has penetrated our day-to-day life and the number of pictures that is being taken every day (which is even much bigger), our citicism actually has gone down. If you don’t care about composition or light when you take a picture, why should you be interested in it afterwards? You simply take the shot (without giving it much thought) and you also simply say whether you like it or not (without giving it much thought).
It probably has something to do with the superficiality we see spreading all around us these days. I guess we have to live with the fact that a growing number of people loves clicking the I Like button. Don’t give it much thought, follow your instict. Thumbs up!
