Comment by snowwrestler | Hacker News Reader

Comment by snowwrestler | Hacker News Reader

This is very interesting as a piece of analysis, but I would caution folks against believing that this kind of complicated process is necessary to make striking photos.

Photography is an artistic endeavor, and art is strongest when it includes an intuitive aspect. That's how a photo becomes your photo, not just a nice-looking photo. And while reading art criticism can help develop intuition, it's even more important to just perceive a lot of art. Photo exhibitions, books, online galleries, etc that you view will all go into your brain and get mixed around. Then you start taking pictures and reviewing your own work, to see what worked and what didn't--for you, the artist.

To be a strong photographer, there's no substitute for just looking at a lot of photography and taking a lot of pictures. Articles like this can give you mental tools to reason about what you're feeling, but the essence of art is the feeling.

The one simple piece of advice for landscape photographers is that you're taking a picture of light. Most of the example photos in this article were taken in interesting light. A lot of them would be boring photos (despite strong composition theory) if taken at noon on a clear day.

Edit to add: I incline toward landscape photography myself, and two books that have really stuck with me are Examples by Ansel Adams and Mountain Light by Galen Rowell. Hearing (well, reading) from the artist about their decisions in making a striking image provides a more subjective perspective on photography--a good counterpoint to what I'd call a more observational or analytical approach like in the linked article.

Well put. Everything you said and a little bit of elaboration on art...

One of the best parts of photography is the speed at which you can have a conversation with your own visual system, refining it in the process.

Understanding art can be thought of as getting bored and finding something new, which is no longer boring, and repeat. Eventually you find yourself bored by almost everything, but with an intense passion for succinct relatable expression. This is often mistaken for pretension, and many do skip the process altogether; most unfortunately, even people calling themselves artists do so.

My point is all these composition rules are great; it’s invaluable stuff. But, you will get bored of them, and that is the beautiful part.

Taking interesting photographs is much harder than taking well composed photographs. For that you need to refine your visual pallette and explore for good and interesting subjects, and find interesting ways to capture them. There are countless well composed shots of the Eiffel Tower, some are probably even accidental. So it does become hard to give much weight to composition, unless it is bad.

I really like your boredom thesis. I'd always heard something along the lines of

"Whereas an accomplished jazz musician knows the rules, a master knows when to break them."

Which doesn't capture artistic intention, motivation like your notion of boredom, and the implied seeking of novelty, until that too gets boring.

I am so glad you mention this!

I always heard that as well. Cinematographers love this phrase, but I totally agree. That saying leaves the concept less than dependent on personal experience. I still don’t understand why, but the purest of expressions seem to come as side effects of the engagement process; not as rewards for accomplishments. So, one must engage and be honest as they can with the act itself, which isn’t to say one must suffer, but just aim to be in touch with their own experience with the medium. I will admit I personally suffer, but it’s not helpful.

I wouldn't say "get bored of them", so much as sublimate them so you no longer think consciously about them. And you learn that it's not "following the rules of composition will make great photos", so much as "most great photos follow the rules of composition".

Composition is also about tension/resolution, much like music. You can increase tension, but that doesn't mean you're actually breaking rules.

Fair. I want to add that when I talk about “getting bored” of them, I personally do this in a childish and unrefined way on a regular basis. So I don’t want to sound like I necessarily mean progressing beyond them. A childish rebel instinct can result in boredom all the same. Paired with curiosity, it’s granted me with an accumulation of experiences in exploraing the visual world. The rules are wonderful but breaking them is what gives me resilience as an artist. It’s why I can fall from great heights, lose access to a medium, and overcome jealousy. I can always recall my own fluidly evolving set of rules. Don’t get me wrong; praise is really important, but the confidence in child’s play has over time fostered a relationship with my eyes that I only know to call love; certainly the closest thing to freedom I’ve ever known. I wish I were exaggerating because I sound like an absolute dork.

At the end of the day, I am actually a rigid rule follower in my output. Most of the rule-breaking takes place in my imagination. I find myself giggling to myself on film sets regularly, for example. Or at bus stops for that matter. This is what gets me out of bed in the morning.

Or as Charlie Parker allegedly said, "Learn the changes [harmonic structure], then forget them."

I think there is a lot of benefit to knowing the fundamentals. Some people can develop their intuition just by looking at things but for me learning some theory is definitely useful. For example I had to take art classes in school. My stuff was horrible even after trying for years. Then my sister showed me drawing technique and some other trucks and suddenly I could draw decent stuff. It didn't make me into an artist but at least I had a foundation to build on. Same with photography. I think knowing things like the rule of thirds and some color theory can give you a big jump start.

I would add that this kind of literal analysis is only useful to train _seeing_. More so, you are training to see in a very specific way. The lines drawn in the picture by the author to indicate composition, rhythm and stability are quite arbitrary and could be drawn a dozens other ways.

In a way, you train your neural networks to see by looking at images, then, while actively photographing you outsource decision making to your own trained neural networks. After a while you can predict the best camera position, settings and get a tingling sensation moments before an interesting situation (in street or event photography) happens.

The Microsoft Pix [1] iOS app can't compose a good picture, but it does take multiple shots and uses algorithms to figure out the best image.

I think we may see more algorithmic camera apps in the future, possibly AI powered.

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftpix

The importance of good composition has diminished over the last century as technological advances have allowed for greater experimentation. When I took my first photography class in High School, our teacher gave us a single roll of film and dictated what he wanted to see in each shot taken (e.g. shallow depth of field) and any composites we did were by taking scissors to prints in the dark room. A lot of thought went into each shot when you knew you only had one shot.

Today we're able to take hundreds, even thousands, of ridiculously high resolution photographs of a scene. We can program our cameras to do automatic bracketing so we're sure to get the right exposure, and if not we can fix it in post. We're no longer limited to composition before we capture the photo as we can import a series of photos into Photoshop and create panoramic, HDR, composites, and just about anything else years after an event.

I think there is definitely some value in learning a few of these rules because they do help you take better pictures when you don't have the luxury of time to experiment, to plan or control your environment. A prime example is taking photos of your kid at a sporting event. Understanding lines of sight, directions of travel, the rule of thirds, and knowing how to frame the subject can really help you to capture the emotion felt in a very fleeting moment.

Yes, light is all important.

I've participated in online photo review communities that almost always seem to end up bickering about composition and other rules as if they were absolutes. Such discussions can often miss the underlying art, or photographer's message

These kinds of analysis are very useful. The field of aesthetics has very little science behind it. I agree that must professional photographers know about these but don't really use them formally. One use case that I think is not being mentioned is automated design tools, photography software plugins, AI, etc can utilize these. So anything that furthers these formal aesthetic systems is a win in my book.

Right — This is a good analysis of _why_ many photos look nice, but often in practice you're intuitively creating compositions like this. As you improve you can "feel" and see what makes a good composition without thinking about it in such a blatantly technical way.

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