What The People See

I have been having a discussion with friends from my photo group lately and one member Jon made a very good point. I think that sometimes we get so hooked on all our various toys and techniques that we forget the basic way most people view photographs, they look at the work and do not care about the subtleties of film/developer and camera's but instead either respond or not to the artwork. His quote speaks to me about what photography is truly about. The simplicity of a good photograph is composition, originality, compelling story and clarity. We as photographers need to concentrate and focus on what the people see, and not get dazzled by the many distractions.

I definitely think that with the printing process, one can get absorbed to the point of no good outcome or real difference in the final print. As though fiddling in the printing process would actually compensate for a bad photo (by 'bad' I mean not of good composition).  I see this often with test prints, where people on the inside debate version A vs. B vs. C to no end, and the people actually viewing the end product (who aren't, despite the elitism, usually 'the great unwashed') don't care because it's composition they're looking at….they couldn't care less about slight variations in contrast caused by using Diaphine vs. Rodinal. The final print is the final result, there's no question, but the more variations we as photographers start fiddling with along the entire chain, the more I think we can start to get further and further away from things unintentionally.