So, what makes it a failure is that he missed when he wanted to shoot it? What if he wanted to just miss it? Then it's art?
What makes it the right moment? Because that's the moment when you like it?
I have tons of shots where I timed the shot within a few milliseconds of my intended timing, and for a particular reason. Does that make those shots art? Why?
Sure it takes skill to put paint to canvas, certainly not everybody can do it, but if their painting is an exact recreation of the scene of front of them and they are merely using a different medium to capture it, doesn't that somewhat fall under your definition of craft?
Why does that make a difference? People do 'craft'.
People do both arts and crafts. My argument is that most photography is craft, not art.
Perhaps. But what if it's an exact replica of something that could never have been seen or photographed?
It seems to me that there's been some evolution from:
"I don't think anyone really produces art with photography."
Did I get that right?
[quote="@LeeJay"]
Well, I'm an engineer and scientist and mother nature is not flexible about her rules.
[quote]
You do know that Engineering is an art? Art is not more open ended than engineering. Engineers start with ill-defined problems that have no single “right” answer, but many. I am an Engineer and if you give the same project to 10 Engineers, you will get 10 different outcomes.
The work of an engineer appears precise but concealed are information choices, inarticulate judgments, acts of intuition, and assumptions about the way the world works. The information an engineer conveys is overwhelmingly visual: not verbal, not numerical. Behind the drawings and screen shots are numbers, instructions, programs and tools, just like visual art.
The worst Engineers I know are those without passion and have a closed mind. They never get beyond the textbook. Photographers, who photograph with intent to comunicate with a visual language are artists in just the same way. They make informed choices. They use timing, choice and a command of visual communication to illustrate an idea or concept.
And good engineering can be -- heck, should be -- elegant and beautiful.
But I think the phrase that found it's way into a lot of my patent applications "ones skilled in the art" use the term "art" to mean something different than what we are talking about here. Likewise, "term of art" in a legal document is talking about something else.
Maybe. I've always said if you produce the scene, that's art. Photographing it isn't. Maybe I've come around to allowing drastically unrealistic photography+editing to be art.
This is the headlight of a Honda Odyssey:
Different enough from reality to meet your bar?
It might be very, very hard to find that elegance and beauty, at times.
I don't know. Is one reality and one different in some way? I'm not sure what that headlight looks like.
I'm an engineer, and I don't think of engineering as a science at all. The scientists figure out how the universe works. The engineers harness the scientists' findings to make things that are useful, and sometimes beautiful.
BTW, most of what folks call color science isn't science. It's engineering. Real color science is a branch of psychology.
And most of computer science isn't science.
Next time you see a Honda Odyssey on the street, look at the headlight.
And good engineering can be -- heck, should be -- elegant and beautiful.
It can be well hidden. Under the skins or in the code, for example.
This definition is very questionable. Art is not typical in a visual form. We have music and lyrics. It is also not primarily to produce works to be appreciated for beauty or emotional power. Art can also be ugly and sometimes speaks to the intellect.
I found this more reasonable definition in the net claiming to cite some Oxford dictionary: "the use of the imagination to express ideas or feelings, particularly in painting, drawing, or sculpture". This contradicts simple image shooting without an imagination, idea or feeling, i.e., most of my own images. I am okay with that.
Well, I've spent most of my career as a research engineer at a national lab using engineering to do science, so maybe that's colored my thinking.
Here. Something I engineered (it's a test machine for a particular type of research).
