Where we look from?

Thought came across me the other day while I ws at the gym (yes I know I’ve changed but life’s good at the mo and at this age I better do something so I don’t become a burden, oh and on a side note was also listening to Shaun’s new (?) single Mumbo Jumbo which you should go out and buy )

Anyway back to the story I was watching the Women’s 10m diving at the Olympics in the gym as there’s no sound you get live subtitles and it became apparent that what I was seeing and what the commentators were seeing was very mismatched..

I thought that was a good dive and the commentator was like oh dear, that’s not good is it..

I thought strange as it looked good to me but then when the replay came and reading what the commentator said I changed my mind and thought ah ok then maybe not…

And of course as ever I relate this back to the act of photography which I’ll split into two here, there’s the act of making a picture, where you as a photographer possibly see something very different to say someone experiencing the event or view

There’s a rather good Guardian ad that I always use in my teaching which is here.

Then there’s the viewing of the image, now that’s a whole different kettle of kangaroos, professionally lost count of the difference of opinion on my images from one toxic workplace always asking me for impossible shots from events to other people loving what I thought was not a great picture !

Lesson there is that you should never lead with a negative comment when showing your work as you never know how it’ll be perceived.

Thought about how pictures are read and appreciated, some images you take that have had quite a journey to make them either through technical prowess or through negotiations of difficulties that add to the achievement of imagery so where do you look to get an idea of if the image is very good?

Others images have such a story behind them that you feel this image is great when sometimes it isn’t as great or maybe the story escalates that image once people hear about, so where is the true grading of the image?

Could image grading become like the Olympics where some sports are scored on creativity, landing, difficulty etc That would be interesting where would you cite a Lewis Baltz in relation to a David Bailey for instance or a Dianne Arbuss in relation to a Nan Goldin for example?

I’ll try for a classification based on difficulty, rendering and landing.

What would be your classifications for images?

As ever we need an image like sports needs TV coverage, so I’ve reached into the archive for this one to find a sports type image.

Sports wasn’t my most photographed subject but I did do a few sports and here is an image from my days at Getty with a bit of a celeb twist and one that the others at the other end of the pitch didn’t get ! this is also one of those images that no one really liked at the time but well lets apply the classification to this image out of 10

Difficulty 7.0 / Renedeing 4.2 / Landing 3.0 giving a score of 4.73 !!

Ah maybe not the image I thought it was !!

Thanks for reading…