People frequently ask me what exactly is fine art photography? Before I answer, I usually take a big breath and brace myself to answer the question in the time it takes to ride a few floors in an elevator as they usually expect a quick answer. And, despite my apprehension to answering their question, I have come to realize that most good answers are the ones that are simple and direct. Hence, I begin by clarifying that fine art photography does indeed have objective criteria despite falling in the subjective and vast realm of art.
NIKON D810 + 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm, ISO 200, 1/2000, f/5.0
The principal and underlying criteria that distinguishes fine art photography from other fields in photography is that fine art photography is not about digitally recording a subject. Using a camera to document what exactly appears in front of the photographer usually falls in the category of photo-journalism and is frequently found in publications that feature purist images taken with a camera to record the scene as it exactly existed at a precise moment in time.
NIKON D810 + 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm, ISO 31, 1/1, f/16.0
Fine art photography, on the other hand, is first and foremost about the artist. It is not about capturing what the camera sees; it is about capturing what the artist sees. In fine art photography, therefore, the artist uses the camera as one more tool to create a work of art. The camera is used to make an art piece that reveals the vision of the artist and makes a statement of that vision rather than documenting the subject before the lens.
NIKON D810 + 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70mm, ISO 80, 1/1000, f/5.0
For example, Georgia O’Keeffe’s famous desert paintings are an expression of her vision of the New Mexico landscape; on the other hand, if a dozen photographers with tripods set their settings to the required exposure after light-metering and took an image of the landscape next to Mrs. O’Keeffe’s easel, the results would be images that would have recorded the scene but not have presented the artistic statement required of a fine art photograph. Hence, a fine art photograph must contain elements of control similar to the controls Mrs. O’Keeffe and all artists use in making an art piece. Ansel Adams’ expressed it best in the quote below:
Art implies control of reality, for reality itself possesses no sense of the aesthetic. Photography becomes art when certain controls are applied.
So, a fine art photograph must go beyond the literal representation of a scene or subject. It must deeply express the feelings and vision of the photographer and clearly reveal that it was created by an artist and not by just the camera. It must be clear that it involved an original, deliberate creation and that every aspect of making the photograph in the field and in the photographer’s post-processing digital studio, including the printing, are an individual expression from within the artist. The fine art photographs you see in the article are examples of the works I have recently completed. Please enjoy and share your thoughts, or perhaps examples of your work, in the comments section below.
NIKON D810 + 200-500mm f/5.6 @ 390mm, ISO 250, 1/1250, f/5.6
This guest post was submitted by Brian Rivera Uncapher. For more on Brian, visit his website or check out his Instagram feed.
Thanks, sometimes I just don´t know where put my photography..and the clients one…IM starting a platinium palladium series..once they are finished I will post them to be showed.
Yes, good idea; everyone knows that a photograph, once platinum or palladium toned, is immediately transmogrified into high Art.
Aouch.
I think you can’t make it if you don’t also include the fake mat and frame when displaying on the web.
Ha,Ha, agreed.
Yes, the fake mat and ornate frame are almost as important as esoteric ‘post processing’ (selenium, platinum, gold and palladium toning, cross processing, litho, etc,) in elevating the banal to the lofty pedestal of Art.
The artistic quotient is, of course, raised that bit more if a long forgotten historic process is used for the ‘capture’ (silver collodion, albumen, calotype, Daguerrotype, etc.) and higher still if the chemicals employed in processing the said work of Art are either highly explosive (e.g. guncotton) or dangerously toxic (e.g. potassium ferrocyanide, mercury vapour, etc,).
Ether is particularly suitable in this regard as it can be anaesthetic, hallucinogenic, toxic or explosive depending on the oxygen content of the immediate environment.
An obscure title and an utterly unintelligible artist’s statement round ‘the work’ off to perfection.
Yes, with a little extra effort, Arty Bollocks can be raised to an entirely new level.
(Just having a bit of fun but I am sure you get the point.)
Clever comment!
Very nice article, with lovely photos as illustration.
Quite interesting, thank you.
Or like Friedrich Nietzsche said in four words: “No artist tolerates reality”. So true!
Nenhum artista tolera a realidade, é a mais pura verdade.
Thanks for heads up. I just got my first dslr for Christmas. Going to some islands in July. Can’t wait to try some new techniques.
Good to see photography which shows a distinctive and well thought-through way of seeing. Like the way you define fine art photography. Yes, it’s a Way of Seeing, as you so appropriately illustrated with Georgia O’Keefe’s work.
“It is not about capturing what the camera sees; it is about capturing what the artist sees.” ~Perfect~
Thank you for giving words to the soul’s experience…
There seems to be a moment in my locale that people are ‘creating’ images of mundane subjects & calling it ‘fine art’ .
As a ‘real abstract’ photographer (if that is a thing) – I don’t get it & it is hard to keep my mouth shut seeing the banality of the subject …
yes yes a piece of concrete, a stretch of grass, or what looks like a realtors photo…. ZZZzz….
Can you please provide a list of these “mundane subjects,” so I know what to stay away from?
“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”.
Some of the greatest photographs ever made have been of mundane, prosaic and everyday subjects.
Mundanity is not the problem of the subject – but of the photographer.
Tell ’em Betty!
All one do is click whatever we feel like using whatever photography we know, have fun clicking, and if someone look at your picture and exclaim: hey, I would call that a work of pure art, good. I mean very good. You are probably a fine art guy.
Thank you Brian for a beautiful and well written article…your website is amazing! Looking forward for future articles.
Hello Brian,
Your images are very nice, thanks for sharing with us.
With regards to ‘ fine art’ I don’t really know what that really means. About a year ago I bought a Canon plotter and It was my hope to sell my work around the various pubs and restaurants in our town. The objective was not in the least to make money, more so to show the beauty of the Northern Philippines. Printing your work has to be the second most reason why we, or should I say, I love photography. If your images are parked on a hard drive how to share your experiences.
Best wishes…
Any discussion about what makes art “art” is always going to cause differing opinions, no matter how well-reasoned. As illustrated by this post and the comments.
In my very personal (and art-uneducated) opinion, “art” is anything that raises an emotional response in one or more people other than the creator. So in that sense I disagree with you, Brian – if a picture that is “merely a digital record” resonates with a viewer, there is no reason not to call it art from that person’s point of view. Of course you can argue that for something to be called “fine art” you need to take it one step further from reality, but frankly you’re just creating a sub-set of “art” to suite your own perspective. It’s a bit like hearing die-hard landscape photographers claim that all portraits are similar, and die-hard portrait photographers saying the same about landscape images. To both groups the other type of photography doesn’t evoke a strong emotional response, but that doesn’t mean either is right.
By the way, I loved the third and fourth picture, but I’d definitely do away with the frames – those are so 2002 ;-)
By the way, I feel like I should clarify the “other than the creator” part in the first sentence. I don’t mean that one shouldn’t create “art” for one’s own pleasure (as an amateur photographer I myself have the luxury to focus on the type of work that resonates with my own emotions), but that often emotions about one’s own work originate from nostalgia, thereby clouding your judgement about its purely aesthetic value.
You are right, emotion is central to how we react to an image, but equally, emotion is a poor tool for evaluating our own work.
Time and a dispassionate eye serve better.
Many of my ‘red hot shots’ have ended up in the trash bin after a suitable ‘cooling off’ period!
I have been rather confused about what is “Art”/”Fine Art” using all mediums since starting out on the photographic learning experience in the 1960s. My sort of conclusion is: I like many forms of imagery and dislikes many other images – some may be called “Art”/”Fine Art” or indeed just a photograph and I am happy to leave it at that.
You have no idea how much this article has helped me. Thank you. I will say, that because I often shoot rather quickly, I don’t always have a conscious awareness of what I saw. It is in post processing that I discover my “inner artist” in the hand off between my right hand and my left. I LOVE that moment and the work that follows.
A well written piece on an interesting topic. As a visual artist and also a photographer I usually set out to “capture art” rather than “record nature”. I feel that the camera is a tool to use to facilitate a working artist to create a piece of visual art. If I were a scientist using a camera I guess it would be different set of circumstances.
The camera is not seeing independently of the photographer, so there are not two different visions. For me a photography becomes a piece of art when through it a photographer manages to convey an emotion or an idea that he got seeing some scene. There are photos that are perfectly composed and have very good technique quality, but that remain in the land of the mere reproduction without “soul”, or can’t move us intelectually (they are no suggestive). The photo that is just pretty, with or without extra manipulation of the photographer, is going to stay in the decorative realm.
“The camera is not seeing independently of the photographer, so there are not two different visions.” So your essentially saying the camera records an image, final answer. I have to agree with you on that point, but the” visions” for that image can vary depending on the user. I am an artist I have a vision or an aesthetic I am looking to convey and over a body of work you will begin to see that vision. Maybe its decorative maybe its something deeper. To my point the “vision” of the scientist is entirely something else. Thus I would have to argue there are two different visions for that image.
The scientist is going to catch an image of the same place, but not the same image .The artist is seeing the world through the lens of his camera, but with a different view than the one of the scientist that has not artistic talent. In the hands of an artist, a camera is the extension of his special glance.
That seems a bit hard on us scientists.
Can a scientist not have an artistic vision too?
Surely the argument about what is or isn’t Art is not only subjective, but also cultural and generational?
In the end, it’s all just personal opinion, taste and preference.
Of course that a scientist could be also an artist, but in the example that was given to me it was not, so my comment was made in this context. Definetely the appreciation of what is art is subjective, cultural and generational; but that doesn’t mean that any scratch has the category of a Francis Bacon piece of art, or that the work of Eminem has the same value of Bach work. The point is that the subjective view must also be cultivated and qualified. Even when cultural and generational elements are part of art appraisement , the passing of time helps to sharpen our eyes on the subject. By other side, our considerations about what is art are refered to human art, and not to the extraterrestrial one, that must be pretty much different.
I had a brother that was a photographer and really an artist. I remember how surprised I was of his ability to see interesting things and get beautiful photos where I coudn’t see anything. In the same moment and place, and with the same camera in our hands, he was producing interesting photos and I was seeing nothing.
“The point is that the subjective view must also be cultivated and qualified.”
Cultivated and qualified by what?
As someone with ‘elitist tendencies’, I want to agree with you but my head says that judging what is, or is not, Art is an entirely subjective endeavour.
What is art to you, may be garbage to me and what is art today may be garbage tomorrow – or vice versa!
Yes, cultivated and qualified. That’s not asking for too much. If somebody wants to be a clasical music critic, he must hear a lot of music, preferably have some practical and theoric music studies, etc. I agree with you about the existence of some critics with elitist tendencies, but that fact doesn’t mean that is impossible to to have a well educated art critic. I’m sure that the work of Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Picasso, Francis Bacon, Bach, Prokoviev, etc, is never going to be considered garbage, because the real works of art seem to resist very good the past of time. Greetings.
I wanted to say that the real works of art “stand up well over time”. Sorry.
Ah yes, time is probably the most reliable arbiter.
My parents thought that Rock (Beatles, Bowie, Pink Floyd, et al.) and Jazz (Miles Davis et al.) came from the jungle and that Abstract and Surreal Art (Picasso, Dali, et al.) were infantile daubings by con men.
They were wrong.
We are also probably wrong about many of those that we happen not to like today.
And many artists considered great today will fall from fashion and be considered less great tomorrow.
Turner was ridiculed by his peers, now he is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential artists of the age.
It’s all just a big roundabout.
Of course there will be so much visions as photographers are; but we are not going to see a camera walking by himself to a place to do a photo. The “vision” of a camera is always the vision of the photographer.
Nice article. I always find it fascinating on this site when discussions turn to “What is photography?” kind of subjects. It is a natural discussion. In art school, we were taught to consider the question “What is art?”
The answer to the question “What is fine art photography?” is simple: any sale over $250.
This is the best perspective to have. Everything gets a label after the fact. No one can tell you if a photograph is fine art before it has been put in a gallery or before it has been sold. It is at the point that the photograph interacts with it’s environment that it gets a label.
But sadly this means I am definitely not a fine art photographer haha
Wow those images render a great fine art picture without the need of painting.
I am an amateur photographer and am learning how to use the camera not in auto but started using the dial to assist me with the schooling of photography.
I have always just said, that intention to make something “Fine Art” is what makes it so. Whether or not you like something is than just opinion.
But if that is true, even a bad rap would be in the same category of Bach music.
Yes. That is what subjectivity and opinion mean. You may not like it, but that does not change it intention…
So you say that “la Macarena” has the same artistic value than Bach’s Mass in B minor ?
Check and compare:
www.youtube.com/watch…HHq23AXZ1A
To some people, yes. To me? No. But I will not deny both those people intended to create something.
Yes, both those people intended to create something. The ones that composed the Macarena did a very simple and sticky song for the masses, and Bach, a highly qualified musician, composed succesfully a monumental and sofisticated musical work to praise God. Of course, the ambition of Bach work was not necessarily a guarantee of succes, but fortunately he managed to create an extraordinary work of art. I think that not a single educated music critic is going to put the Macarena and Bach’s Mass in B minor in the same league, or is going to give the same artistic value to both them, just because the creators of the Macarena “wanted to do something”, or are ignorant enough to believe that they created a musical monument.
However, you are right about the subjective character of art valoration (we must live with that, specially in modern times); for that reason it is important the culture and preparation of the people that produce, buy, and create art.
I work longtime as a “MMA” trainer. MMA is a combat sport that includes elements of boxing, kickboxing, jiu-jitsu, wrestling and judo. My experience of more than 35 years involved in combat sports, makes me suitable to occasionally act as tournament judge, an activity that could be pretty much subjective, specially when a fight is even; but that subjectivity doesn’t mean that the opinion of a last minute MMA aficionado has the same value than the view of a qualified judge, even when sometimes unqualified judges conmitt terrible mistakes. I think that this example is a valid one. Greetings.
So what you’re saying is, only a person with enough experience in a particular art form have the right to judge it as art.
Well, that’s your opinion. I disagree.
Yes, at least an experience seeing art. A man that is not practicing boxing, but who sees and analyzes thousands of fights along time, and had some advice or information of professional sources, could perfectly act as a qualified judge. What is no possible is to get a boxing jugde or art critic without any preparation.
I wanted to say…..”for that reason it is important the culture and preparation of the people that produce, buy, and CRITICIZE art”.
I wanted to say…..”for that reason it is important the culture and preparation of the people that produce, buy, and CRITICIZE art”.
I think Jorge’s makes a good point for the discussion of “What is Fine Art” as opposed to “What is Art”. I would go on to say its like the wine connoisseur vs. the layman wine drinker.
Cultural preparations do play an important role in determining a work of art worthy of a fine art museum. A work of arts uniqueness in the world as well as its cultural significance are hugely important to a museum curator. Anyone can claim that a photograph of a wad of chewed gum stuck to a city trash can is a work of art, but does it have cultural significance and any sense of artistic discipline to ascend it to a museum quality piece. Does the photographers body of work evoke any cultural phenomenon or emotional response in relation to this one photograph.
If any one can claim to be anything to anyone why do we have any kind of conventions or cultural leanings at all?
>>Anyone can claim that a photograph of a wad of chewed gum stuck to a city trash can is a work of art, but does it have cultural significance and any sense of artistic discipline to ascend it to a museum quality piece.<<
The great irving Penn made images of cigarette butts in the gutter.
They were not, however, ordinary, everyday cigarette butts.
They were platinum-palladium cigarette butts.
Haha ?
This is truly uplifting material.
My spirit soared like an angel when the moving lyrics and unforgettable melody washed over me with a power that defies description.
It makes Bach and those other dudes look like pitiful amateurs.
This ladies and gentlemen truly is Art with a capital A.
‘Nough said, bro’.
Very good set of comments, far more entertaining than the original article (which was pretty good to be fair)
If sarcasm could be described as an art, and I think it probably could, there are a number of “fine art” pieces here.
If a ” significant” number of people, independently, pay particular attention to a “thing” it becomes a “thing” of interest.
This is why the aspiring “artist” places yet more frames around the “thing” (outside of the canvas or crop) it shows us that we, the viewer, should pay more attention to it. I use the word frames both in the literal and metaphorical sense.
The longer and deeper we look at something, or are “guided” to look at something, the more likely we will start to call it …. a…ar….art.
And this, my lovelies, is why there is “art” in everything but only if you “see” it.
I would like to elevate your comment to “fine writing”.
It is not about staying in front of a single creation, with somebody washing your brain trying to convince you that a piece of crap is a unique work of art. As a matter of fact, my ability to judge the quality of my own humble photos – as for sure happened with every one that posted his ideas here – become better upon the long time I’m photographing and seeing other people’s work, and nobody could honestly deny that. For some reason there is a famous quote saying that your first 20,000 pics (I’m saying a number) are the worst of your production. That means that experience and general education in the art’s world is going to improve your ability to recognize artistic quality. For me it is not wise and not honest to say that there is not difference in the artistic value of different creations, only because our opinion is relative.
The only points I would like to call you up on are your use of the word “better” (competition in art will never leave everybody happy) and your disregard for the thoughts of others.
If, for example, you have studied art and you are moved by a piece of work does that mean someone who doesn’t agree with you is wrong? Not as “educated”? Or, the other way around, if you loved the piece and somebody more “educated” tells you that it is rubbish. Do you “learn” from them and let them take away your love of the piece of work?
It is all about looking deeper. How deeply can you look into a white painted wall before you see something someone else may have missed? And who told you to look at the wall?
“Art” has not rules and if you feel it does I would ask you to try letting go of those rules and see what happens.
Photography is a journey through time a timeless capture in a moment of time, no future, no past, just now within ones inner awareness of ones surroundings to give reason from creativity and expression at a moments time, capturing that within the looking glass is the complementary factor from imagination to transformation.
Does that hold true for a pack of detergent, I wonder?
Betty sticks to the mantra of “point and shoot”.
Only with packets of detergent.
: )
Truly agree.
in brief is simply a reflection/feeling of an artist that transform to an image.
Tell ’em Betty!
Love the photographs as great examples of the type of digital art to aspire to.
Brian’s comments and assessment of the definition of Fine Art Photography is the best, most cogent explanation I have seen. I would like to use some of his explanation on my website (credit given).
May I have written permission?
Loved ur content..
Many definitions for the term “Fine Art” state the creation of something simply for its beauty without any further purpose. What is beautiful to each of us is different; likely because we all use different life experiences to evaluate what is beautiful. If you want to truly consider having the ability to understand “Fine Art,” you must learn how to remove your prejudice and open up your thoughts such that you can experience the art as closely as the artist did when it was created. This is undoubtedly the most difficult “skill” to achieve around viewing art but once you have it, “Fine Art” becomes demystified and more meaningful. Practice not projecting your motives onto another persons art because it redefine the original meaning by attempting to make it yours, not theirs. This cannot happen if you want to truly understand “Fine Art.” Another way to state this is if you don’t like another persons art, then try to learn what the artist was thinking at the time of its creation, or just walk away but don’t think you are the absolute authority on its value.