I’ve just commented on an article by Mike Johnston on his website at The Online Photographer and I am reproducing my comment here.
I recommend anyone to look at Mike’s site and also to look at the photographs of the late Barry Thornton mentioned in the comment, whose site is HERE .
Mike,
Within a line or two of your article I decided what you were saying was that creating effects – in this case, infrared – doesn’t make up for a poor photograph; it just attempts to hide the deficiencies.
I remember the late Barry Thornton, whose website is still there at http://www.barrythornton.com/ saying much the same thing.
And I remember looking at his black and white landscapes, which were so detailed you could walk around inside his pictures.
And that was the satisfaction in them – that as far as you wanted to go, there was something to pull you in further.
And whatever it is in a photograph that holds ones attention, that is what the photograph has to offer.
Above all a photograph with pretensions to being a good photograph should be a thing to arrest the attention. It is after all, just a piece of paper, so it had better contain something worth staring at if it is to be worth its salt.
So perhaps it is not that photos are derivative that makes us not see or appreciate the endless copies, but rather that as with anything, familiarity breeds contempt.
