What makes a good photo?

I believe there are two aspects to what makes a good photograph. The first is the technical side. Different people will have different ways of categorising this aspect and for the sake of this podcast I used five elements:

1. Light and exposure
2. Composition 
3. Colour and tone
4. Timing (in all its interpretations)
5. Relationship (between the viewer and the subject)

The second aspect is to look at the questions you are asking. I am constantly inspired by other people's work and I'll typically ask:

• How did they achieve that result?
• How can I do the same thing?

What inevitably happens after answering the second question is that I will put my spin on it and get the outcome I want.

So, if you're not sure what makes a good photograph for you (and this, of course, is all subjective), start by asking more questions. A comment that I like is that the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions you ask. I think this is true for photography.

Another thing to think about is the result you are driving for. So, begin with the end in mind and ask the questions that will lead to you achieving the outcome you are striving for.

And, a final comment about social media: Shoot what you love and don't worry about the number of Likes. And, ignore unsolicited comments. Only accept comments from the people you would choose to approach for feedback.

It's time for another podcast...

Transcript

>> Speaker A: 0:17

Hello again and welcome to another podcast. Now, one of the things that I like to ask myself every now and again, and it's certainly true when I'm teaching photography to people. And it's something that I will have raised if you've attended any of the webinars or listened to any of the webinars that I run, which I do from time to time. And basically that is asking the question, what makes a good photograph? So I'm going to look at this from a couple of perspectives. Now, the first one, one of the things I like to do is just have a Google and ask that sort of question and see what comes back up and just get a view or an idea from, or at least a perspective from other photographers. Now, I might agree with them, I might not, doesn't really matter. but it's interesting to get other people's perspective because I think first of all that makes you question your own assumptions or perhaps your own thoughts on what makes, in this case, what makes a good photograph. It doesn't make you wrong, but it just gets you to look at those answers, again and maybe refine them a little bit or maybe you'll get other ideas. So I like looking at other photographers work. I was speaking with another photographer a couple of days ago and his stuff is absolutely amazing and I love what he does, I know how he does it, and that's part of it. So coming back to really the point of this podcast, I'm going to, as I say, look at it from two ways. One is, I'm going to take five elements that this is sort of came up on the search and I'll quickly talk through them because I think they're relevant. But then kind of above all of that, there's another, aspect that I want to cover as well. So the elements that came up in this search were first of all, light and exposure. So obviously photography is primarily about light. without light you don't have much of a photograph. So getting a good exposure is, to me probably the most important thing you can do, when you're shooting something, because if your exposure is correct, then you can do a lot of, work in post processing. This is coming from the perspective of digital photography. So in that instance, the post processing is just as much a part of creating the image as shooting it. And obviously the better you can get it when you shoot it, the better the final result will be. But if you have to get anything, absolutely spot on exposure is the one I would tend to lean towards. And when it comes to lighting, well, look, this starts to come back down to what's the result you're looking for. Because in some circumstances, so wildlife, for example, I like to work in a softer light so that I can get more details of the animal where I can. I like to get more of a sort of portrait shot of the animal. And what I'm really striving for in most instances is to try and present the animal in a way that it wouldn't normally be seen. And that might be by getting really close to it, so that you get a really intimate photograph, of that particular animal. Whereas in reality it might be something that's some distance away. So it's actually very difficult to get that experience. so that would be a soft light. However, you might be going for something with a very strong contrast. You, might be leaning towards something that has very strong whites, very strong blacks, maybe not much in, the middle there. So again, it comes back to what is it that you want to produce, as a final result. So there's a phrase, start with the end in mind. I think it's a very good one, because if you know where you're trying to get to, it kind of defines what you need to do at the beginning to, facilitate that kind of result. Doesn't mean you're going to do other things in between. You might get an inspiration, you might get a really good idea while you're shooting. So, definitely keep yourself open to all those kind of things. But if you start with a particular idea in mind, and I normally have, ah, three or four, that I'm thinking of when it comes to taking a shot. And I'll see which of those I can get. Can I get all of them? Can I just get one? Or, does something else pop up that I hadn't thought of? So that's essentially light and exposure. I mean, obviously I could talk about that for a whole podcast, and it's quite a deep subject, but it comes down to, you, I, as a photographer, having an understanding of what sort of light, light conditions give, which results in terms of the final photograph, and then working with that. So that was number one. The second one is composition. And that's something I've spoken about quite a lot. I've done webinars on it in the, photography courses that I have online. composition is definitely a big part of, those, because there's a lot of things you can do with composition, but what's the point of composition. So why does it really matter? So you may well have your own answers to that, which is great. for me, the idea of composition is to try and engage someone who's looking at the photograph. And something I've shared on numerous occasions now is that one of the best definitions that I've heard, for me, it was one of the best definitions that I've heard of. What makes good photograph is basically the longer somebody's looking at it and engaged in looking at it, not trying to work out what it's about. But the longer they engage with it, the more they're kind of drawn into the image and start. And as they spend time looking at it, they see more and more in the image. That to me is a strong photograph, and that will happen because the photographers really, put some thought into the composition, and what they're doing is taking the viewer on a journey through this image and telling the story. So the visual storyteller, which if you've listened to these for a while, or again, been on any of the webinars, you'll know that I like to talk about the visual storyteller, and that's also part of the training. So composition, to me is about engaging the viewer and it's about telling a story. And hopefully those two things will come together and you'll have an engaging story that the viewer enjoys and makes that photograph stand out. So that was the second thing. The third thing that popped up was color and tone. So I've sort of spoken a little bit on the tone in terms of contrast, that sort of thing, when I was talking about light and exposure. But colour and tone are important because color can make or break a photograph, or you might not want colour in there at all. So if you're thinking of a sunset or a sunrise, obviously, well, I say obviously, but to me, the most powerful ones are those where color has been used very well. It's a combination of light, colour. What else is in that image that engages you, that draws you in, and if you get an emotional response. Response to an image, that's generally the sign of a powerful, powerful image. if it's revulsion. Well, you know, I'm kind of half joking here, but, yeah, it could be really bad. But on the whole, I'm talking about well thought out photographs. If you get an emotional reaction to it, an emotional connection to it, that's a really powerful photograph. And a lot of that comes down to composition, use of color, use of light, all the elements that make up a good photograph. So what you do with color, obviously, again, there are a lot of things you can really, heavily saturate the image. So there's very strong colors, in that image, or you can desaturate so that there's very little color, but the color that is there might be around your subject or somehow supporting the subject. so again, depending on what you're shooting and the composition that you have, you can experiment with color. So that's something. certainly when I was doing portraits, actually, I used to love playing around with color and looking at how I could over saturate or desaturate particular images. And this would combine with composition. So I might re crop, go from a landscape to a portrait or the other way just to get a different feel for it. And I found that would give me, a very different versions, if you like, of the same photograph. Because just by re cropping and varying things, you can get, a very different connection with just one image. Okay. Timing is another thing. So, to me, timing is quite a big subject, because what do you mean by timing is, I guess the second question to ask. So, first of all, it could be something like time of day, time of year. So if you've heard me speak about planning a wildlife shoot, that's one of the, first things to look at, because if you're trying to get a particular event going on. So like wildebeest migration, something like that, you really got to be there at the right time, otherwise it's going to be quite a disappointing shoot. another common example I use is, humpback m whales cruising past Sydney. And I happen to be in Sydney as I'm recording this. And, again, this time of year. So it's early October. This is getting into the, one of the peaks in the whale watching season, here in Sydney. Because the bulk of the whales have been up in the Queensland waters, they're now heading south. many of them will have carved. So you've got, brand new baby whales straight out of the plastic wrapper, swimming down with their mums. And they will tend to be closer to the coast, as well as a way of, just protection against killer whales and, predators that will go after the calves. So timing wise, this is a great time to go whale watching because you're likely to see a lot of whales, in my experience. so this is talking just from personal experience, but the whales seem to be more engaging, this time of year. And what I mean by that is, they're more likely to swim around the boat. you might get spy hopping, that kind of. So other behaviors that you might want to see in my experience, they seem to happen more in the second half of the season when the whales are heading back down to Antarctica for the southern summer and that's where they'll feed. But they seem to be more relaxed, on this part of their migration. So that's just my observation. others might completely disagree and that's all good, but the important thing is to understand the timing of events. So there's that sort of broader timing. Time of year. obviously the next one is time of day. So think about what result you're trying to get. Again, that might be related to lighting, sunrise and sunsets, obviously they happen at particular times of day. And then the other aspect of timing is just what's going on with your subject. If you are photographing sport, for example, you can get some really good pictures if you get your timing right on, the, just when you hit the shutter button, just you know, depending on what the sports people are doing, depending on what the sport is. But you can get some really good shots that way. so it can come down to that kind of timing. What's going on with the subject in terms of wildlife? obviously if you have an animal chasing down another one. So a predator chasing down a prey animal, that can be quite dramatic. So again, the timing of the shot and how you're working with timing. So shutter speed and do you want to absolutely freeze everything, do you want movement in your shot? All that kind of thing is important to think about too. And then the final category, I guess, that came up in this particular search was relationship. And that to me was really talking about the relationship that you are creating between the viewer and the subject. And subject is another aspect that I think is important because I've seen some lovely photographs, you know, well exposed, great colors, all the rest, but I really don't know what I'm supposed to be looking at. And that for me is another aspect of photography that's very important because if you are photographing something, what prompted you to photograph it? What was it about? Whatever's in that image, what was it about that that prompted you to take that shot? Now this is really a less relevant question, I think, these days with digital because you can just, do literally hundreds of photographs on a memory card. But if you grew up with film, so probably talking to older people here. But, film is definitely making a comeback as a niche, these days. But if you're working with film and you might have only had twelve shots to work with, or 24 or 36, they would be the normal. So that made, certainly made me a lot more selective about what I took photograph of. Particularly, I was working on a roll of, twelve frames. So having that discipline and putting that thought into the photograph, I think is really important. Even today, when it doesn't matter so much, you can just shoot away and you've still got lots and lots of, memory left to carry on shooting. But when it comes to selecting the images that you choose to share, whether it's, privately, on social media, in an album, on a wall, whatever it is, you do need to, I think it's important to understand, what it is that you're photographing that the viewer, ah, who doesn't know your thought process, doesn't know what was motivating you in that moment. The viewer instantly connects with that image because there's something about it that has prompt, that prompted you to action, and there's something about it that the viewer looking at it will connect with. Now, you will have heard me say again before, if you've listened to me before, that this won't necessarily be the connection that you had with the image. Because at this point, when you put images out there, this, to me, again, personal opinion, this is where photography becomes art. Because art to me is something that is subjective. And we look at the art, ah, through the filter of our own life experience. And obviously our life experiences vary. We don't all have the same life experience, so we're going to see potentially, different things in the same image. So that, to me, is where it becomes art. But I think that relationship with the subject is really important. And I spoke earlier about how I like to have more intimate kind of portraits of animals when I shoot them. My sort of first go to, if you like, that's the first kind of image I'm trying to get when I'm seeing an animal. It's to get in really close and get that connection, particularly through the eyes. And therefore, as a viewer, you're maybe connecting. You're seeing the animal a different way, you're seeing the animal a way that you wouldn't see normally. And I'm actually thinking, one of the images I was looking at with some other photographer I was with a few days ago, and he's shot some amazing pictures, and ash showed me some other pictures, I think were from another photographer, but, these were of a lion. These were shot, at one of these waterhole setups that you get at some reserves, at some lodges, they'll have a waterhole and it will be lit and it will be lit at night. Because often at night, that's when predators are active and they're not necessarily killing anything at the water hole, but they might be just going to the water hole to drink. But because this whole area has been set up for photographs, you can get some excellent shots, or they can use remote cameras, whatever it is, and you can get very low level, very intimate shots. And these particular ones were, converted to black and white. So you've now got that impact of strong lights, strong darks, strong shadows, because everything in the background will be black. Because the range of the lights is quite limited. It won't be blinding, it will be fairly limited, but so that the animal is well illuminated. And you can get some really good, in my opinion, really good atmospheric, photographs by doing something like that. So again, what are the opportunities that are available to you? What can you plan? What can you predict? What can you, take particular equipment along with you to get shot? To get particular shots. So all that kind of thing is about planning and thinking through what you would hope to get. particularly with wildlife. You know, the wildlife has to cooperate. Doesn't always do that. So depending what you're shooting, you've got more or less control over what the final result is and certainly the planning stage, what sort of thing you, produce. So those were the five elements. Now, I'll just go over those again, just sort of very briefly summarize. That came up, when I was just having a google. So light and exposure is one aspect, composition another one. Colour and tone was the third timing and then relationship. And I've obviously just gone through those. So that's one aspect of it. But the. The other angle I wanted to take this from is questions. So, one of the things I heard a while back, was, and this relates to quality of life, this getting a bit slightly philosophical, I guess, but, And I can't remember who said I can't remember Tony Robbins or somebody else, but somebody was saying, the quality of the questions you ask determine the quality of your life. So you might take that on board, you might not all good. but I thought it actually applies very well to photography because I. I think the questions you start to ask around your photography will drive you down a certain path. You'll start to explore a certain m way. And I guess two of the questions I tend to ask quite a lot, if I see work that I really like, the first one is, how do they do that? Because I want to work out exactly what they did to get that result. And then the second question is, how can I do that? Because having liked that, I'd like to have a go myself, see what kind of results I can get. And I think by experimenting. I've spoken about experimenting in a recent podcast, but I think once you start trying things out and experimenting, particularly if you're inspired by somebody else's work and you're trying to replicate it initially, what I find typically happens is that I'll put a spin on it, my own spin on, that particular approach. So, it's good to replicate, it's a good way to get a new take on your photography. And photography, is one of those, things, whether it's pastime or a career or whatever you're doing, it's one of those things that I believe constantly involves. I think the best photographers constantly evolve what they're shooting. And, I mean, the downside of that is you can look at what you shot maybe ten years ago and be really disappointed with it. But that's kind of the nature of doing anything where you've got some level of growth and expansion, related to, that. So I think the, in terms of what makes, a good photograph, which is really the point of all the discussion, I guess, around this podcast. Yeah, there are definite elements to it, and this is all covered in training in webinars, people have their own views on it, so there's a lot to think. This is more the technical aspect of photography. there are definitely rules you can follow, there are definitely rules you can break. And I think I have no issue, whatsoever with breaking rules. but the thing is, you need to know which rules you're breaking, because if you know them, then you can replicate what you're doing, and then you are in control of that process. If you don't know what the rules are that you're breaking and you're just kind of randomly trying things, then, it's much harder to replicate. It's a bit more sort of blind luck. I've certainly seen that in some cases, so have a good knowledge of the rules and be clear about which ones you want to break and experiment with. But then once you've done that, once you're getting, maybe there's a particular look you've been trying to get or a particular style of photography you've been trying to, achieve. And once you've got that, start looking around and start asking questions. And what would be the questions that you'd like to ask? They might not be the same as me, but you might think of other ways, or even looking at your own work, you might think of other ways of, shooting that subject, but getting quite a different result, maybe a more engaging result, maybe a result that makes people think about it more. Somebody who, is looking at the photograph for the first time, it might provoke some sort of, question in them. So really, it does always come back to what makes a good photograph for you. And again, when I'm doing training, so if you've been on any of my courses, that will be one of the first questions that I'll ask you. And then we'll actually dive into that in a bit more detail and there are further questions to ask. But it is important, in my opinion, that you know what makes a good photograph for you. And this comes back to just staying motivated and enjoying what you're doing. Because if you're shooting stuff that you really enjoy and you're getting results that really inspire you, that I think is the most important thing you can do as a photographer. If you're doing it, for fun, if you're doing it for work and you're doing contract stuff, then it comes back to, well, what, does the client ones. And then you need to be really clear about what makes good photograph for them. So the quality of the questions you ask there will shine a bit of a light on, what, the likely outcome is they're looking for and what they'll be happy with as a result of, them working with you, rather than coming up with results for them that you might think are great, but they're not what they want at all. Again, photography being subjectivity is, it is really important that you understand what it is that the client is looking for. And you get as clear as you possibly can before you, certainly take any photographs. And it may even be that before you agree to do the photography for them, because they might be after a style that you are just not interested in and you don't want to deliver. And I guess the other thing on that, if you are shooting stuff that you really like and you like to post it on social media, forget about all the likes because I know, and this, I kind of laugh a bit, but this is actually quite a serious thing because I know people and I've spoken to people who get really excited about what they've done. They put it on social media, and then they get very few likes or people start making comments, you know, not particularly complimentary comments about the photograph. And, depending on where you're coming from, that can actually be quite, maybe, ah, even devastating, reaction, to have to deal with. Certainly very disappointing one. So really a couple of things to take on board with that. I've experimented a lot, and what I found is that the people who, like and follow my main style of photography, particularly, and that's developed over time, they like certain photographs. They're not always the ones that I'm particularly excited about. Some of them, I think are kind of boring, but I'll pop them up there and they will often get a lot of likes. And the stuff that I think is really interesting or exciting where or where I've tried something new, they won't get so many at all. So that's just the nature of it. and in terms of comments, all I would say is, well, my own opinion is I don't take on board comments, particularly unsolicited comments from anybody who I would not choose to go to, to ask for advice. So if it's unsolicited, I'll tend to ignore it. Anyway, if it's solicited, then there are certain people I will go to because I respect their work, they know what they're doing, and I, recognize I can learn from them. But if whoever's commenting on your work does not drop into that category, then I would just frankly ignore them, because there are a lot of people out there who like to feel, you know, whatever they want to feel, big, important, whatever it might be, by commenting on what other people are doing. And they're really not very good at it themselves. So my suggestion there is don't take it on board. Okay? So that is all it's going to talk about on that. I hope, once again, I hope that's maybe got you thinking. Maybe I answered some questions, maybe it's got you asking some questions. So what are the quality of those questions, that you're asking? And, whatever you're doing, please enjoy your photography, because if you're not enjoying it, you're not doing it right. I think that's a fair comment on photography. So have fun, and I will speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now.

>> Speaker B: 25:33

Just before I go, I wanted to remind you that, first of all, I have an offer running, with my free download. So if you go onto the website and there's a link at the bottom of the description of this particular podcast, and that will take you to a link, to where you can give me your email, I will send you, a PDF, which is ten simple steps to improve your photography today. So, it includes the kind of things that I talk about in the podcast. So it's all there in black and white. With some examples, you can see what's going on. And also remember, I offer, online photography courses. I do fine art. If you haven't checked out my galleries, please do. The links are, again below the description of the podcast. And don't forget to help me out. So you're welcome to subscribe both to the podcast and you can become a member of my Patreon membership and, join me there. So in that membership, you get, access to me. and also you get advance notice of things that are coming up. I'll tell you about other things that are going on that I don't share in my Facebook group or on Instagram.

>> Speaker A: 26:42

Or anywhere else, really.

>> Speaker B: 26:43

So it is, just a membership where if you like what I do and you just want to be a part of it, the subscriptions are really low. It's just a cup of coffee a month. So, how much better could I be than that? So please take a look and, I'll speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now.