Sufficient Photography

Some things in life are necessary, but not sufficient. For example, we need food to live, but we also need water, air, exercise, and so on. Food alone is not enough, it is not sufficient.

While this seems obvious for some things like food, it’s harder to remember in other places such as when exploring new ideas, doing experiments, creating pictures, and so on.

For example, when taking typical pictures, things like proper exposure are necessary, but that is not sufficient to make a good picture. We still need to worry about proper focus, aperture, ISO, and so on, in order to produce a desired picture.

But even control of all the technical parameters is not enough if there is no artistic vision. There needs to be some sense of meaning and aesthetics in order to really craft a picture. Without those ephemeral things, we are simply making a snapshot. Maybe interesting, especially if the subject is profound, but generally not sufficient to create art.

In other words, the technical details are necessary but not sufficient for making a compelling picture. There’s something additional that’s needed.

We may find this additional element hard to describe, but we generally recognize when it’s missing. The best photographs make us feel, and doing that requires more than just technical considerations.

Interestingly, this additional element is also much harder to describe. Artistic vision is hard to define, it’s sort of a “you know it when you see it” thing. Except people do not always agree on what they see in a picture. This makes identifying artistic value even harder to work with.

Yet there is clearly something that separates the work of great artists from those who are technically competent but have no vision.

Because this extra element is so difficult to pin down, it’s easy to simply focus on the things that are clearly defined and measurable, like the technical aspects. Some may even say that those are the most important things.

But while they are certainly important, even necessary, I don’t think they are sufficient.