Beyond the obvious

Shell fish on Cornish rocks wait for the incoming tide to return. The premise for this article is that there are three basic elements which affect our perception and therefore appreciation of a photograph. I arrived at this conclusion during a typically philosophical breakfast conversation with my dear wife, Magda. Never mind breakfast, I hear you say, what are these three elements. Well the first is obviously the image itself. Secondly we have the viewer’s personal life experience which filters the image and influences the way they perceive it. The third ingredient is for me the eureka one, and a rather slippery customer to pin down. I’ll call it visual fashion or probably more accurately ‘learnt perception.’ Number one, the image itself is self explanatory really. Here I mean the subject matter but also the visual presentation (colour, black and white) as well as objective technical aspects, including saturation, sharpness, composition etc but excluding any interpretation or jud...

Portrait of B on holiday with his family. This was one of several portraits for this family taken during a week long reportage. Perception is a strange thing. I like this portrait and so do the family that commissioned it. They are delighted with the images taken during the reportage. However, when I wanted to upload this picture on a photo sharing site my wife and fellow photographer, Magda, said, "No one is going to comment on that, it's just a straightforward picture of a young boy." And she is right. I tried the image briefly on three different websites. No comments. Many of my images delight clients when they see them in print but on the Internet they don't attract much attention from fellow photographers. It must be a matter of perception. I'm told time and again that I capture the essence of an individual. Of course if you don't know the person you can't recognise this aspect of what the image achieves. Portraiture is about the person you are phot...