[Don Schaeffer]

As I read discussions on this photo site and others it has become clrear to me that there are two kinds of photographers, pointers and composers. Pointers regard the camera as a device for recording events or things in reality, as a kind of pointer device that says, "look at this." Their photos tend to be with long lenses, and cropped around a particular feature--isolating it and giving a clear view. The composer more often uses wider lenses. The composer's images are things in themselves--artistic objects whose design, balance, impact have to be evaluated independent of WHAT the photo is about.

The pointer photorapher frequently wants the composers' photos to be cropped to highlight a central feature and often criticizes the composers' photos as having no central focus. On the other hand, the composer often finds the pointers' photos boring and accuses the pointer of removing context.

Both kinds of photography are valid and have their own audiences. I think we should decide what kind of photograph we favor in the process of critiquing our fellows.

[Toad]

Hmm. This division of photographers into 2 distinct groups seems arbitrary and a bit simplistic to me. Determining the artistic "style" of any particular photographer surely deserves more analysis than applying one of only two possible labels to their body of work.

Even the choice of labels - pointer and composer - seems rather biased to me. Pointing is a simple mechanical action that is often associated with rudeness or stupidity while composing is an artistic endeavor. No offense, Don, but I just don't agree with these classifications.

[NT73]

Has someone upset you Don?
I would have thought, as in any walk of life, there are many more then two categories for any given subject
But surely pointers can also be composers and vice-versa. I do find photo's on the net that are boring to me, but maybe not to the taker. But I would only comment if asked, assuming I felt I could give some sensible critique.
What appeals to one doesn't neccessarilly appeal to everyone. (How do you spell it)

[Don Schaeffer]

Maybe they were bad labels. Using a camera was originally a way of recording things--like making a drawing of something important. A lot of people like a central focus--they take pictures of things, events (like sports photography or photojournalism). Others make photos that may not illustrate anything but become objects in themselves. Nobody has hurt my feelings or anything (I am well beyond that). However I have seen rather interesting photos criticized because they lack a central focus. I have also seen photographers try to improve a photo by cropping it down to the essential central object--eliminating all the context. That's what led me to this speculation.

[shuttertalk]

Hm.. interesting ideas Don...my 2 cents - perhaps these are two different methods of composition, as opposed to photography in general?

[Don Schaeffer]

Yeah that's better. I don't mean there are two distinct types--thats insane--but there may be two extremes of style--a dimension if you will--from pointing to abstracting, with all points in between.

[Toad]

Yeah that's better. I don't mean there are two distinct types--thats insane--but there may be two extremes of style--a dimension if you will--from pointing to abstracting, with all points in between.

Not meaning to flog a dead horse, but cannot "pointing" shots also be abstract? And do these really represent 2 extremes of style? In my photos, sometimes I point, and sometimes I go wide and inclusive. What I do is based on the content of the individual image rather than on a conscious (or unconscious) philosophy or style. If I saw each photographer's shots always conveying the same basic composition philosophy, I would agree, but that just isn't what I see when I look around.

I do sometimes see critiques that substantially reinterpret the photographer's vision via cropping, however. While I think it is OK to say that the composition of a particular shot can be improved via a crop, especially when the surrounding detail is extraneous to the subject, I do agree that suggesting a crop that substantially changes the meaning or interpretation of a photo based on the critic's personal preference should be avoided.

This isn't to say that a photo should have no subject, and artistic interpretation is an "anything goes" license for avoiding taking the time to frame and compose. Its a complex subject.

[Banded Drake]

Hm.. interesting ideas Don...my 2 cents - perhaps these are two different methods of composition, as opposed to photography in general?

I tend to lean this way . I do not like " depending " on cropping , although there are times that cropping, IMO , make a photo stronger . There are many ways of looking at any one image , and i dont think that anyone can shoot the same shot because of the way they ( the photog ) sees the shot .
I think that there are photogs that try everything to make the photo " right " , but they miss because there eye isnt the same as the next photog.
When i am shooting with other people there are many times where i just dont see what they are seeing and vice versa . Its all in the eye of the beholder type thing .

Funny thing is there are some " great " well known photogs that i dont like there work , i always seem to say " i would have done this or that " but there photos are much " better " than mine .
All that said i think ST summed it up the way i see it .

.... Shawn

[Don Schaeffer]

Thank goodness we all make our own judgments.

[matthew]

This discussion has me thinking about Freeman Patterson, who's extremely successful with photographs that are mostly pictorial scenes and texture that frequently use subtle and sophisticated compositional cues. I find them boring and pointless.

But yet I'm not always creating a strong central subject to my photos. There usually is one, I think, but often the negative space is what defines the image.

And I'm certainly no stranger to the "crop this that and the other thing" school of critique, either. I've heard the panel of three judges dissect a picture until there's not a single pixel they agree on. People frequently discuss the photo that they would have taken instead of the photo they see.

[NT73]

How do you give critique on a photo someone else thinks is perfect? It is all in the eye of the beholder.
A way back on another board, someone posted a shot that was very soft to say the least. When asked if the lens was clean, the said person stated no! it was foggy and that's how it looked. ....And it did.

[Toad]

It seems to me that the salient question should be "What is my photo about?". Do all the elements of the photo support the *meaning* of the photo?

Example 1: Suppose you have a photo of a cow in a foggy field. If one of the corners of the photo contains a small piece of the fender of your car because it happened to be in front of the camera when you shot the photo, I think that most people would agree that this is a good candidate for a crop, because the fender adds nothing to the image.

Example 2: Suppose you have a photo where one of the corners is badly underexposed or overexposed. Should you crop it? That depends. Does the overexposure or underexposure communicate something about the meaning of the photo or serve to vignette the *subject*? Or is it just a bad exposure?

Example 3: Suppose you have an image that displays strong elements of rhythm or repetition in its composition. Further suppose that one section of the image flattens and negates that repetition. Should you crop it to strengthen the impact of the image?

Maybe these are crappy examples, but my point is that the composition of all the elements of a photo should support its meaning. This is true whether the photo is wide as the great outdoors or zoomed in tight. I sometimes ask myself "If I were painting this scene, would I include this visual element?". If the answer is no, then I tend to crop it. If the answer is yes, then I leave it in.

[Don Schaeffer]

I'm ceetainly not saying there is no such thing as a bad photo or miustakes in the photo. Some photographers use telephotos and others wide angle. That expresses a difference in thwe way they look at the content.

[Keith Alan]

What does it mean when you see the crop you'll make as you're shooting the photo?

And what about when it's time to print, and you have to make a 4:3 as-shot photo fit into a 5:4 (8x10") or a 3:2 (4x6")--something's got to go, and you may have to include more in the frame then you would have for a strictly web-destination picture to give you room to work out all the needed crops.
(I find this particularly hard sometimes since I tend to frame in-camera fairly tightly, and have even gotten burned by smaller-than-they-should-be mats).

Frankly, I would consider the two types if shooters Don describes as "Includers" and "Excluders".

Includers are more concerned with context, or else don't have a strong vision of what the photo really should be about. Or they prefer photojournalism over art. Or they just don't have much zoom and are too lazy to move closer?

Excluders either have a preconceived notion of what they do and don't want to show, or possibly are amateurs trying to look avant garde by mimicking the 'look' of other photographers that they think are good.
Or maybe they just like to communicate using shape and color versus complete items and scenes.


I see many many photographers who I personally feel really should move a little ways toward the "excluder" model, and more than a few that should become more inclusive, too.
But then they would all end up composing as I do, and the world would be more boring for everyone.

[Don Schaeffer]

Keith:

That is a very good nomenclature, "includers" and "excluders."

I have my digicam set up tp make pictures the shape of postcards (4 x 6) not 8 x 10. My prints are frequently made on postcard stock (my Canon Selphy printer uses it).

[Keith Alan]

I recently set my camera to 3:2 ratio when shooting for our Christmas cards, since we use the ones that fit 4x6" prints inside and I want to know exactly what will be in the frame.
And that's how I learned that some cameras won't display a histogram unless you're in fullscreen mode.
Apparently the black bars top and bottom would throw off the histogram reading, so instead you get a box with an X in it.

I'm told newer cameras don't have this problem.

[Wedding Shooter]

Wow - a lot of interesting comment here. Personally I think photography is just another way to express your vision of the world - in it's purest state. There is a commercial side to photography that means you are not always expressing your personal vision - you might be employed to capture your client's vision for instance.

Personal vision might be the snap shot view of your family or the carefully composed landscape that you got up at 4:00 in the morning to shoot at dawn. It really is a bit limiting to try and categorise photography down into two areas. A lot of the time we mix up wide angle work and telephoto work. It is all about capturing your vision of a scene. Sometimes this requires a wide angle lens, sometimes a telephoto. Often we are limited in our vision simply because we don't have the particular lens with us at the time.

Includers vrs excluders and pointers versus composers are just words at war. We all have ways of capturing an image and I don't think that labelling two separate groups is particularly helpful. Critique is all about calling it as you see it - with respect. If you want critique based on a certain style than pop that in the opening post/title perhaps.

[matthew]

I've been printing photos from last christmas for the in-laws this christmas, which means 30 prints at 4x6. (Actually 3.74x5.74. Border.) I can't say that I've ever had a more miserable and frustrating experience as I tried to find images that still made good photos after they were cropped down into such an awkward shape. I always compose for across the narrow dimension of the frame for a 4x5 final ratio, and all of my cameras have a 3:4 sensor. I haven't seen the world through a narrow long rectangle since I retired my Canon APS Elph, which hardly counts for anything.

And the worst part is that today I need to go through my hockey photos, and try to fit eight of them into 4x6 frames. For even more challenge, it's one of those 'collage' frames, with a set number of vertical and horizontal slots. I'm glad that I'm using a high-end camera, because I need it to fit the lowest-common-denominator print size. Sorry for the rant, but this has been really frustrating to me.

[Toad]

Generally speaking, I tend to shoot wide (inclusive) and edit tight (exclusive).

I shoot inclusive because I have never been too anal about getting the shot perfect right from the camera, and I know from experience that I need to crop to various formats like Matthew complains about. I also shoot in "stream of consciousness mode" - where I know I see something I like in a scene, but I can't always put my finger on exactly what it is. I also find that when you take too much time composing a shot in-camera, you risk losing the moment all together.

Most of the *meaning* in my photos happens in the edit stage though. I spend a huge amount of time analyzing a shot for exactly the crop I want - and most of the time those crops don't reflect any standard photo size. Like I said before, I think all of the visual elements in a shot should support the overall meaning, so my editing tends to be more exclusive than inclusive. That is not to say that meaning is imparted by tight crops - the opposite is often the case - depends on the shot.

I guess that I am still uncomfortable with categorizing photographers into distinct camps. I would like to reserve the right to be inconsistent in my approach, I suppose.

[Don Schaeffer]

You are a wonderful post process artist, Toad. I too use that approach, although I am getting used tolong lenses.