TheFlyingCamera
Membership Council
Yes, technically ALL photos have a story, even if the story is "oops, I screwed up and triggered the shutter when the camera was pointed at the floor/the gravel driveway/the sky/the palm of my hand/the lens cap was still on/etc". Where the crux of the matter exists is with intention - when a photographer takes a (non-accidental) photograph, they have an intention. The intention could be anything from something as simple as "I was here" (a so-called "record shot", which accounts for 99.999% of all photographs taken) to a visual meditation on the meaning of life as represented metaphorically by xyz. Viewers are always free to interpret the image however they want to, and no matter the photographer's intention, they will, and they will find things in the image that the photographer NEVER intended. THAT does not represent a fault in the photograph/photographer. The fault occurs when NOBODY looking at the image can see what the photographer intended. This is predicated on the notion that the photograph has an intended audience beyond the photographer. If the person taking the photo never shows the photo to anyone but themselves, then it is not subject to external interpretation, therefore it is always 100% successful in telling its story. But if you are intending to share the image with others, then the failure condition applies - if you photograph a rose because it is beautiful to you, but because of how you photographed it, nobody else sees it as beautiful, then the image fails to communicate your intent. As human intent is rarely unique on an astronomical scale, this event is improbable, but not impossible, so total failure is similarly improbable, so the judgement needs to happen on a graduated scale.