Search
Generic filters
Exact matches only

Fine Art Photography? [not nude]

Homepage Forums General Photography General Photography Discussions Fine Art Photography? [not nude]

  • This topic is empty.

Fine Art Photography? [not nude]

  • aoluain
    Participant

    Just going through the motions of updating my website
    as regards deleting old pics and uploading new ones.

    I have a few pics I really like but dont really come under the
    usual themes.

    I wanted to create a new section titled ‘fine art’, what is fine art?
    do the pics below qualify?

    Thanks in advance.

    Stevie
    Participant

    I think the RPS class landscapes as Visual Art

    aoluain
    Participant

    Ok,

    but I cannot put either of these into Landscape, Seascape or Wildlife ?

    shutterbug
    Participant

    I would find “fine art” very hard to define….not that I have thought much
    about it must admit :) I suppose I dont really equate photography with
    fine art (thats just me personally) I like the sound of Visual Art though.
    Love the tree shot though!

    aoluain
    Participant

    Thanks Jenny,

    As steve said would I run with a section called ‘Visual Art’ ?

    I will leave it up and see what people think.

    Sounds ok actually to me.

    A

    rc53
    Member

    Isn’t it as much about the printing?

    MartinOC
    Participant

    There was a question on dpreview once “what lens should I buy for fine art photography?” which resulted in a long tongue-in-cheek discussion of what exactly is “fine art” and the conclusion was b&w noods and so protrait lenses were recommended.

    The point was that fine art is very hard to pin down. To many it is not just a categorisation of style/type but of quality so calling your own stuff “fine art” could set yourself up for derision.
    On the other hand if you do painting/sketching, it is art and you can describe yourself as an artist without too much problem. I guess because most/many people take photographs whereas most people don’t draw, that it is more a mark of artistic ability when used in the realm of photography.

    Nice photos btw, in order of appeal to me 2, 1, 4, 3. They are very artist imo.

    Martin

    aoluain
    Participant

    Thanks Guys,

    I just looked this up on WIKIPEDIA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_art_photography

    There seems to be a definate but overlapping style called ‘Fine Art Photography’ and is
    not necessarily Nude although Nude would be the most obvious.

    For instance do I class this as Architecture or fine art? I did class it as Architecture
    but it is an ARTISTIC impression of this building.

    Oh and I really dislike watermarks now so excuse it as a distraction.

    Can we class fine art as something someone would potentially
    hang on their wall as a peice of ART?

    randomway
    Member

    The last one is a fine art photo. According to the FAPB a picture belongs to the fine art class, if at least 30% of it is blurry.

    jb7
    Participant

    I think the pictures would need to be consistent with your Artist Statement-
    without which, I think it’s difficult to tell-

    It’s possible to talk around anything-
    if you google ‘Fine Art Photography’
    you’ll probably return millions of results of photographer’s websites
    all claiming to do ‘Fine Art Photography’

    That last picture, I don’t mean to be rude,
    but if I was asked what it was, I might say it was a digital manipulation of a picture of a building-

    I really would find it difficult to see it as an Architecture Photograph-
    which is usually based on a combination of straight recording,
    the best light possible, and an informed choice of viewpoint.

    Although some artists use electronic displays to show their work,
    I’d say that the vast majority would use the medium of the print-
    with the choice of approach, subject, process and medium of final reproduction playing a major part.

    It’s up to you what you want to call it-
    as I said, there are millions of people out there who are ‘Fine Art Photographers’ according to their websites-

    I’ve just seen the last comment-
    Zoltan has a valuable point-
    but if the blur is a digital addition,
    does that make it Digital Art?

    j

    aoluain
    Participant

    Hmmmm didnt know that Zoltan, thanks

    but pardon my lack of knowledge but what is ‘FAPB’?

    JB,

    Yes I did google and found varying types and styles, confusing
    really.

    Thanks for the indepth feedback as usual. As Rc53 mentioned
    a big determining factor of Fine Art photography would be
    the finished printed product.

    I had a different thought on Fine are Photography but strangely I
    cannot put in writing, it seems to be more of a feeling
    I get from an image where the boxes are ticked and I can slot
    it into the Fine art box! I know this may seem airy fairy or
    arty f*rty.

    Going back to the 30% thing Zoltan mentioned and your words Jb,
    how then do we define an image as digital art? is it that easy to
    say my image above as digital art? I know it was a question JB but
    ok I applied blur on the PC to give an effect but this can also similarly
    be achieved with some add on’s to the camera/lens. still digital though.

    Hmmm,

    Going back to what Stevie and Jenny suggest, Visual Art . . .

    After a bit of thought visual art is too vague really.

    then again maybe thats all my images are and dont qualify as
    Fine Art.

    HHmmmmmmmmm !

    jb7
    Participant

    Ok, some folk actually do say that about blurry pictures-
    in my experience, people who have no time for blurry pictures, or Art-

    To them, pictures should be uniformly sharp,
    and that is where the craft of photography is shown to it’s maximum.

    still digital though.

    Well, not necessarily-
    there are many ways to achieve blur photographically.

    Many different kinds of blur can be produced without having to process the image electronically.
    The most pleasing types to me are usually as a result of the taking lens,
    or by using subject or camera movement- or movements-
    though blur can be introduced at the printing stage too.

    These effects are difficult to recreate in photoshop-
    and trying to do so leads to the question-

    If you are good enough to recreate the characteristic blur of a particular lens on an image,
    then why spend hours doing it on a computer,
    when you can do it better in less than a second on a camera?

    If the effect is more sophisticated than a single radial mask with a single blur filter,
    then it really is reaching into the realms of digital art-
    which can be fine art too, I suppose, if you can sell it as such-

    But the blur on the picture above looks like it’s the result of a couple of clicks,
    and a couple of slides,
    and I don’t think that it looks anything other than a digital effect-

    As usual, only my opinion, could be wrong too-

    j

    randomway
    Member

    OK, let’s leave the blur and the jokes for now…

    Art is very subjective in my opinion, it is always about your connection to an art piece, your perception of a message or feeling that the piece would transmit. In my crazy and unsophisticated “dictionary of art”, fine art would be the type of medium that is more focused on a message or statement than technical excellence, beauty or other generally pursued aspects of art.

    aoluain
    Participant

    jb7 wrote:

    These effects are difficult to recreate in photoshop-
    and trying to do so leads to the question-

    If you are good enough to recreate the characteristic blur of a particular lens on an image,
    then why spend hours doing it on a computer,
    when you can do it better in less than a second on a camera?

    Yes, I agree. this is the mark of a truly talented photographer, and at the time of taking the picture of the building
    I didnt think of applying a sense of blur in the foreground, an after thought.

    as Zoltan mentions too its about the technical aspect of the image, the ‘how did he do that?’ effect the image has.

    So most of the GOOGLE results are not a true representation of Fine Art Photography. The photographers have
    gone through the motions of categorizing their images without asking the question, is this fine art?

    this seems to be a bit of a mine field.

    thanks for the help.

    Expresbro
    Participant

    On a recent meet up..which included Zoltan and Joseph we had a similar discussion..albeit Guiness and Oyster fuelled..and from my recollection it was every bit as definitive and concise as this one :wink:

    My own experience of “fine art” was that it was usually nude photography of a certain quality, but not having given it an awful lot of thought, am not surprised that this was not the case.

    I’m sure someone somewhere must have a definition of what constitutes “fine art” , especially in relation to photography. I am pretty sure there are one or two members on the site that have Fine Art sections on their respective websites, so maybe some of these could enlighten us?

    Personally I’m usually a little dubious about anything that is not easily definable when it comes to artistic endevours. But that’s probably more to do with how my brain is wired than anything else ;-)

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 29 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic.