Quality in photography
How is it that quality is such a difficult term to use, in relation to photography? What is quality in photography, specifically? And what is the difference between quality and personal preference?
There are a number of characteristics in photography that at least I personally, find important to what I consider quality in any given photograph. Because there are so many, and each deserves more attention than a few lines, I will write one blog post about each.
Today, I intend to discuss technique as the first characteristic within this very difficult term; quality.
Technique
Without technique, there will be no photograph. The camera is the photographer’s tool to produce images representing reality in the way we call photography.
What most people seem to forget, however, is that the camera doesn’t necessarily need to be the newest, most modern technical wonder, to produce high quality work.
All it needs to do is to be able to make an exposure. That is; allow light to hit a surface and etch itself into either film emulsion or into a memory card (don’t ask me anything about either, because I am no technical genius).
Now; this exposure that the camera does, can let in too much, or too little light. This is where we can start talking about quality, because what most photographers aim for, is tonality (regardless if in colour or b/w). Tonality has to do with how wide the range of shades is, and if it is on the lower (darker) or higher (brighter) side of the scale. If contrasts are too harsch, this can sometimes be considered lower quality. If the contrasts are too low, that the photograph becomes very gray-ish, this too can be considered lower in quality.
The camera, however, has more techniqal choices than the exposure. The other things needed is a lens. There are so many lenses these days, and each and everyone of them has various and different effects attached to them. While this can be interesting to use, what is most interesting about them is – does this lens add something of value to what I want to photograph?
From the history of photography, I dare say that a sort of common opinion is that certain types of photography requires certain kinds of technique. You don’t necessarily photograph portraits with the same equipment as you photograph racing cars, flying birds or any other fast activity. Knowing what equipment works the best for a specific type of work is definitely a sort of quality check.
To continue on that thread; when I say “what works the best for a specific type of work”, what I mean is – what makes the final result, the photograph itself, look the most to whatever the photographer wants it to look like. This can be anything from as close to reality as possible, to as warped, dreamlike, grotesque or whatever, as possible.
Technique is what gives us the possibilty to create a photograph from whatever we have in front of us. That’s great. But we should always remember that technique is not equal to seeing objectively, because it is not, it cannot be. A camera needs to be operated by someone. Even if we leave a camera be to make exposures when we’re not there, it still needs to be operated. It always needs someone to make choices for it, which in turn just proves the fact that any camera is nothing but a tool. Just like a brush is for the painter, the pen for a writer, the instrument to any artist.
While technique is important, in itself, it is quite irrelevant. What can be said about technique relating to quality, however, is this (at least to me);
When used correctly, according to whatever any photographer wants out of their work, we can start talking about quality of the technique. Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately, just like everything else, this is a matter of personal preferences, just as much as technical skills. Some people like what photographers refer to as high key, others to so called low key. Some people prefer a wide range of tonality, while others.. well, you get the point.
So it IS somewhat difficult to deter what quality, even in this quite narrow field of technique, actually is.
Above all, in my opinion it is a bit naive to believe that technique alone is what makes a photograph. There’s so much more to photography than knowing how to use aperture and shutter speeds. I’ll discuss further about quality when it comes to some of the choices a photographer has to do when photographing. And these choices are all much more interesting – and difficult to specify quality in, than technical matters.
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What do you identify as high quality when it comes to technique – and what other areas in photography do you find quality to be an important part of, and how does that quality present itself to you?
/Malinka
