Technical Criticisms

The Eaton Yard, Study No. 16

Hi there!  Are you, by chance, a photographer?  May I ask you to take a look at the image in this post and form an opinion of it?  No need to spend a lot of time on it, but do give it more than just a cursory glance.  Go ahead, take your time, I’ll wait for you.

Okay, got it?  Did you say the highlights in the clouds are blown out?  Is the lack of detail there troubling you?

I’ll bet it is for at least some of you photographers out there.  It’s true, the highlights in the clouds are blown out, there is a lack of detail there.  But it doesn’t bother me at all, and it also doesn’t bother me if it bothers you.  I’m more interested in why it bothers you.

For sure, technical flaws can cause images to fail.  But I think technical flaws cause images to fail when they detract from the content of an image, for example, if they are unappealing on their face, or if they draw attention to themselves or distract from the artistic communication of the image.  It’s a judgment call, granted, but I don’t think that’s the case here.  When I was reviewing this image during editing, it took me awhile to become aware of the blown highlights, so clearly they weren’t particularly distracting, at least to me.  Moreover, when I considered it more deeply, I realized that I liked the blown highlights.  To me, they follow from an essential feature of this image – the high-key, pervasive whiteness of the light, the kind of clear and powerful bright light you get on a day when the sun washes out the details in the few, thin clouds that hover over the landscape here and there.

If you’re bothered by the blown highlights, and it’s because you think they detract from the artistic communication of the image, then I respect that.  But there’s another type of critic out there, the kind who levels a technical criticism simply because a technical flaw is present.  It’s a reflexive reaction, a checklist mentality, that when it detects a technical flaw of any kind in an image, automatically disqualifies the image as unworthy simply for the presence of the technical flaw.  “Could have been a nice image, man, but the highlights are blown.”  Needless to say, that’s not my approach to judging the value of an image.       

I’ve been using the words “technical flaw” in this post for convenience, since I assume most of you reading this will know what I mean when I say that.  But in truth, I’m not even sure I consider the blown highlights in this image to be a technical flaw.  Over the last few years, I’ve been tending (consciously or subconsciously, I’m not sure which) to introduce more and more abstraction into my images, including using whiteness as a way to take out details and shift the visual emphasis that various elements in the image have.  I think overexposure (e.g., blown highlights) has a creative place in this that’s worth exploring, and therefore may not in fact be a “technical flaw” when used in the service of creative expression.

But I digress, that may be a topic for another blog post sometime.  My point here simply is to advance the idea that sometimes what is perceived as a technical flaw in fact may not be a technical flaw, and that fine art images should stand and fall on the merit of their artistic communication, not a contrived checklist of technical requirements.