What "makes" a "great" image?

[Galah]

I have recently had some thoughts about this question and would like suggestions from "APUGers" as to what exactly is the single quallity that is common to all "great" images?

(In my view, this same quality is also common to all great literature, painting, sculpture, oratory, architecture, landscaping, etc.)

 

[Curt]

A great connection to the viewer.

 

[MikeSeb]

@Curt's answer is the best curt answer I think.

Whatever it is, I know it when it's missing, by my frustration; remembrance of the sublime satisfaction of seeing it now and again keeps me burning film, against all odds.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I have recently had some thoughts about this question and would like suggestions from "APUGers" as to what exactly is the single quallity that is common to all "great" images?

(In my view, this same quality is also common to all great literature, painting, sculpture, oratory, architecture, landscaping, etc.)

Try to get a copy of 'The Command to Look' by William Mortensen. It will tell you.

 

[panastasia]

I have recently had some thoughts about this question and would like suggestions from "APUGers" as to what exactly is the single quallity that is common to all "great" images?

(In my view, this same quality is also common to all great literature, painting, sculpture, oratory, architecture, landscaping, etc.)

You forgot to give us your thoughts on the "same" quality. Why don't you set the theme going or you'll get answerers that will be so vague and diversified that your question - "common to all great images" - becomes meaningless. I personally don't respond equally to all images that I consider great. I'm being honest. A grotesque image and one that invokes beauty can both be great without having an exact single common quality.

 

[keithwms]

I think that a basic ingredient of every great image is originality.

Some of the greatest images seem inspired by totally new thinking and experience. As if an idea just formed out of nothing and an image appeared... because somebody needed to express it.

But there is also a role for serendipity in photography; we have to be open to the possibility that an unforseen image can become great by causing new and original thoughts to come to mind... after the image is seen on paper.

In either case, whether planned or unplanned, a great photograph is an original photograph. That is what comes to mind now.

One could then ask, what makes an image not so great. Then I'd say lack of originality... or in the worst case, duplication.

 

[Galah]

You forgot to give us your thoughts. Why don't you set the theme going or you'll get answerers that will be so diversified that your question - "common to all great images" - becomes meaningless. I personally don't respond equally to all images that I consider great. I'm being honest. A grotesque image and one that invokes beauty can both be great without having an exact single common quality.

I didn't forget. I deliberately refrained from giving my view, first up, so it wouldn't restrict the variety of views from other posters.

However, your own answer to the question seems to me to contain the essence of what I think, just that you haven't yet actually named the specific quality implied in your answer -so far.

 

[Galah]

Try to get a copy of 'The Command to Look' by William Mortensen. It will tell you.

And, what does William Mortensen say it is?

 

[MattKing]

Sorry, "the single quality" doesn't work.

Great images are usually a sum of parts that together make the image great.

As an example, consider Karsh's portrait of Churchill. The lighting, exposure, selection of focus, body language and facial expression contribute greatly, but without the subject himself, at most the photograph would be interesting and technically proficient.

Together, all those factors speak to us strongly, so the image is great.

Matt

 

[Galah]

Sorry, "the single quality" doesn't work.

Great images are usually a sum of parts that together make the image great.

As an example, consider Karsh's portrait of Churchill. The lighting, exposure, selection of focus, body language and facial expression contribute greatly, but without the subject himself, at most the photograph would be interesting and technically proficient.

Together, all those factors speak to us strongly, so the image is great.

Matt

Well, in my view, although the factors you mention may make a contribution they are, really, beside the point. (Surely, there are many "great" images without Winston Churchill as the subject?)

However, your last sentence, I feel, is getting closer to the point. Can you refine it a bit more: boil it down to a "single" quality?

 

[Kevin Caulfield]

Uniqueness?

 

[Galah]

A great connection to the viewer.

Yes, alright, somewhere along the right track, I feel: but what is the "single quality" responsible for this?

 

[Galah]

Uniqueness?

Not really, I feel: every image is "unique" (i.e., different from any other), but few are "great".

 

[mike c]

They are all analog?

 

[Galah]

They are all analog?

LOL! Certainly not!

Don't forget I said, in my view, this quality applied to lots of other "greats": including great oratory and architecture. Not trying to confuse you further, but I believe that President Barack Obama has this qualilty, but President George Bush (Jun) did not.

 

[mike c]

Maybe that's the answer, a general opinion of the masses based on a historical time line.

 

[MattKing]

Galah, that is the point. In almost all cases there is no single quality that makes an image great.

Great images are a result of a sort of editing - the right qualities are brought together with each other, and other qualities are excluded.

The Karsh portrait of Churchill is great because of the the choices Karsh made, and because he made them when photographing Churchill. Take any of those qualities out of the equation (say if it wasn't Churchill who was presented that way) and the portrait produced might have been good, but probably not great.

If you want, I could say that a great image evidences inspired "editing" .

Matt

 

[eddie]

If it were possible, or easy, to define what single quality makes an image great, wouldn't there be more of them?

 

[keithwms]

It was along those lines that I was thinking, Eddie. I think that's why originality/uniqueness is so often seen in great images. Something that is original and unique will stand out from the pack.... perhaps the most basic requirement of greatness. What great most assuredly is not, is common.

There is no recipe for greatness because, in the future, greatness will require distinction from the current art. And if we can only define our recipes for greatness in terms of what we know now...

 

[eddie]

Exactly, Keith. I think we can agree on what makes an individual image great. I just don't think we can come up with a "universal" formula. Once the creation of images becomes formulaic, they are no longer original, or unique.

 

[avantster]

Galah, you're asking a bit of a trick question, the answer to it is 'Quality'.

Have you been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?

Things that people have listed so far include originality, technical proficiency, connection to subject matter, connection to the viewer. Reducing or defining Quality, in Pirsig's sense of the word, in a set of criterion like this is by nature incomplete and reductive, as these very values are derived from Quality and not the other way around.

Show a gallery of images to a group of people, and there will be some common agreement which are great and which are not. There will also be others which some hate and others love. Each person will have their own reasons. You may recognise Quality when you see it, and you will definitely know when it is not there, but this does not make Quality definable in a strict intellectual sense.

Whatever it is, I know it when it's missing, by my frustration; remembrance of the sublime satisfaction of seeing it now and again keeps me burning film, against all odds.

How can this seemingly paradoxical concept of something undefinable actually help you when you are out taking photos?
Understand your tools (camera, film, darkroom) and your art. Use them until you know how they function and work so well until they become a part of you, an extension of your existence. This is what some call being 'in the moment'. There is a patience, care and attentiveness to what you are doing but it's more than that. It's a sense of inner peace where your tools and thoughts change together in a progression of smooth even changes until your mind is at rest at the exact instant the material is right.

 

[Ian David]

Interesting question. But if you think there is a single quality that makes every great thing great, I suspect that that quality has to be so broad, general or vague as to be basically meaningless. If you are thinking of some kind of "resonance with the viewer/observer" or "reflection of some element of the common human experience", I agree, but it is too vague to really help that much when I am out taking photos...

 

[MurrayMinchin]

...what exactly is the single quallity that is common to all "great" images?

They were made by photographers whose way of seeing, technical proficiency, and connection to subject matter were all in perfect balance.

Murray

 

[benjiboy]

If they knew this they would build it into the latest crop of digital cameras.

 

[AlanC]

The painter George Braque summed it up when he said that you can explain everything about art exept the bit that matters.
To relate this to the original question; the common factor at the core of all great images is that they are unexplainable in words.
If you could explain them, words would be enough and we wouldn't have a fundamental need for pictures.

Alan Clark