First, something I’ve been thinking about lately, which I had designs to write an entire post about but that now strikes me as somewhat too unfinished a thought to deserve such treatment. It has to do with a growing trend among digital photographers that the quality of your work and of your prints can be judged if not exclusively at least primarily by some group of statistics.

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First of all art has never been judged based on numbers. The moment that art is judged not for its certain craft, its inspiration, content, execution, and the ways in which it moves you is when it ceases to be art and takes on a new life as the subject of technical research. I grant that technical research has made possible many of the great innovations in the craft of photography that have opened doors for artists and made possible wonderful works. Those works, however, were to be judged on their own merits, divorced from the particulars of their creation.

I see this jaded math-lust happen the most in the process of printing digital images. Not only do you have to be a board-certified chemist to understand what inks are actually made out of these days, but debates rage among the upper echelons of fine art print makers regarding whether 9^12 bits per million in 17.2 square decileters of molar protein creates a quantization effect of 9.8383-repeating magnitude using 4-picoliter ink spots on granite tile. Or some such nonsense.

As important as some measurements, such as resolution, may be in print making, the fact remains that very well printed photographs can still suck, and very poorly printed photographs can change your life. The trick is to understand all of this mumbo-jumbo only to the degree necessary to achieve the results that make you happy, that satisfy your needs as an artist.

That may have sounded like a bit of a rant…

Edit: Perhaps it wasn’t as much of a rant as I thought at first. Here is a really cool article by Mike Johnston at The Online Photographer about over-reliance on measurements when evaluating the performance (specifically) of equipment. He also goes on to criticize people who use charts and graphs to make meaningless, subjective data appear meaningful and objective. If only it wasn’t true! Good stuff, Mike.

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Ranting notwithstanding, it’s still true that I’m teaching a digital printing workshop in February. If you want to learn how to soft-proof, color manage, and output your own images at a high-end digital lab, this is your big chance. I’ll be teaching alongside Chris Blake, back at Calypso Imaging in Santa Cruz, CA; read about the workshop and sign up here. You will get to print proof images and then make final prints during the workshop, so everyone gets stuff to take home with them. It’s only $599; you won’t find a better deal than that anywhere.

There are some other exciting learning opportunities right around the corner, too, including our workshop in Cape Cod in September, a fall foliage workshop in cooperation with Dan Heller in Vermont in October, and then later on that same month, our City on the Hill Boston workshop. That should be enough to keep you busy before the holidays, right? It’s sure going to keep me busy, I can tell you that much.

Of course if you have any ideas for workshops, questions, comments, rude gestures… Leave a comment!

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Fantastic, you might think, the more feedback the better! Well, true, except that a lot of people calling themselves “serious hobbyists” or “beginning professionals” simply seek out the most positive feedback they can get and live in a world totally isolated from how completely awful their work really is. Paul Indigo asks a question on his blog, Beyond the Obvious: do photo enthusiasts really want to learn? In his article, Paul wonders about the true intentions of people who demonstrate fundamental misunderstanding of the art concepts of photography and blame it on insufficient equipment or software. If these people want to learn, shouldn’t they be more open to feedback?

Ed Zawadzki takes it a step further and asks whether the art of critique has fallen by the wayside to be replaced by the blind exchange of accolades. You can certainly see that happening a lot on some of the larger and less organized sites, such as DeviantART and even a bit on Flickr, though the overall intent of Flickr is much more casual, which deserves to be mentioned.

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A site like DeviantART, with its many thousands of self-proclaimed artistic users, has the capacity to act as the medium for an incalculable volume of helpful critique. The stage, however, was not set for that mode of discourse; DeviantART’s commenting system is used, by and large, for the distribution of praise, and there is no technological nor social pressure in place to counter that. After browsing the site for only a short while, you are given the impression that offering criticism is inadvisable, if not downright prohibited.

DeviantART follows in the footsteps of many other social applications which, in want of remaining neutral, offer no specific guidelines or technical hurdles to shape the course of conversation. It turns out that when people are presented with an enormous and varied selection of content, they choose only the things they like to make comments about. That’s fair enough, and it’s wonderful to receive copious plaudits as a creator—you might say that commendations grease the cogs of creation—but artists in search of higher plateaus, those truly interested in growth, need more. They need critique.

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That’s where PhotoSIG steps in. With a unique system of critique scoring (not to mention using the word “critique” in the first place), PhotoSIG is able to encourage its members to think critically, even if the feedback is completely positive. The number of photographs a user can post in a single day is limited, but additional postings can be earned by submitting “conforming” critiques, which simply means that the critique meets a 15-word minimum and is among the first three to be posted.

Critique authors are asked to follow these guidelines (snagged from the critique posting page):

• If you’re here to give someone a thumbs-down critique because that person gave you a thumbs-down critique, then erase your critique and cool off for a bit.
• A critique is not a judgment. Make your critiques helpful by suggesting ways in which the photographer can improve his or her photo. Don’t simply state whether you like the photo or dislike it.
• An unflattering critique can be very constructive, but you must take care to be as polite and respectful as possible. Ask yourself how you would feel if someone made the same comment about one of your own photos.
• Critique the photo, not the photographer or the other critics.
• If this photo already has a lot of critiques, then think about whether you have anything new to add. Instead of writing a “me too” critique, why not critique something else?
• The three thumbs-down rating should be reserved for photos that are clearly offensive or repugnant, not those that are merely bad. You may be asked to justify or revisit a three thumbs-down rating.

Those are what I would call guidelines to shape the course of conversation. By abiding by those very simple rules, a writer is sure to offer something of some use to the photographer. If the critique qualifies as “conforming” (as described up above), the photographer may rate the critique as “helpful,” which earns the writer extra points that he or she may use to upload additional photos and so on. If, however, the photographer rates the critique as “unhelpful,” the writer will lose points.

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This very straightforward point-based system creates an environment of open and honest communication among PhotoSIG’s users, and it is among the best systems out there right now. I don’t know if a site such as PhotoSIG exists for art of a non-photographic nature, but if one does not… Someone should create it.

Although it’s been some time since I’ve been active on PhotoSIG, you can nevertheless read some of my critiques of others’ work. If you have photos up on PhotoSIG and you’d like me to swing by and write you a critique, leave a comment below; I’d be glad to. Likewise, if you want to critique some of mine, be my guest.

It’s always interesting to get others’ views on a piece. Even if you don’t always get the most well-written, fluent, useful, spectacular critiques in the world, you cannot hope to learn if you do not participate.

That said, everyone has a different threshold of charity, and that threshold seems to be linked to their success and recognition. Completely unrecognized people give things away to gain exposure. After achieving success, they often stop giving things away to maximize their gains. Then, if they become very successful, they may begin giving things away again because they can afford to.

Because there are so many nuances to the ways in which creators may wish for their work to be used by others, the Creative Commons emerged, creating whole new gradations within the copyright system. Now, rather than saying “all rights reserved,” we can easily say “some rights reserved” and call upon a pile of pre-written legalese. Good idea?

Understanding Copyright

Fundamentally, copyright is an agreement among the people to treat creative works in specific ways. Historically, copyright established a monopoly over a creative work that its creator could wield to derive (usually financial) benefit from it, thereby coercing others to create works of their own. Without getting mired in the specifics of copyright law, the intricacies of which have been explained at length elsewhere, the whole shooting match was designed to safeguard creativity in modern society. In the words of Lawrence Lessig¹:

The owner of a still live copyright, that is, one that has not yet expired, controls the rights of others to produce derivative works. … At least until that copyright expires, though the idea of copyright expiring seems itself an expired idea.

Under copyright law, the creator of an original work automatically receives full rights to its use. Only through a specific exception can certain rights be surrendered and others retained, at least until the copyright lapses. In America’s litigious climate, even such a simple thing as stating “you may use this song of mine to make remixes but you can’t charge money for them” requires pages of legalese to avoid ambiguity. That’s where the Creative Commons comes in.

Understanding the Creative Commons

Creative Commons “provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry.” Their chief contribution is in the form of “licenses,” which are basically rules of use for creative work stated in defensible legal terms, written by lawyers. Using their handy license selection questionnaire, you can simply choose the rights you wish to yield to others and the appropriate Creative Commons (or “CC” for short) license will be provided to you.

There are three major categories of rights that CC licenses allow you to control:

• Attribution
• Commericial use
• Derivative works

Attribution means receiving credit, or some indication of ownership. Typically that means a piece of accompanying text containing your name, and possibly the same information in the metadata. Attribution is polite and it appears in the license only because you may wish to waive it, and for completeness. I hope that all of you out there give credit where credit is due without being forced to by a lawyer.

Commercial use is exactly what it sounds like. A work tagged for commercial use means you don’t mind if someone uses it to make money on their own somehow, and one tagged for no commercial use means the opposite.

Derivative works is an interesting twist on copyright law. Under US copyright law, derivative works are almost always permitted, and disputes over whether certain works are suitably different from the originals to be considered “derivative” or whether it’s plagiarism has typically been a decision for the courts. This right permits or denies end users from deriving new creative works from yours, period. In my opinion, denying derivative works is contrary to creation as a whole, but CC leaves the ball in your court.

There is another license attribute used in two of CC’s six major licenses called “share alike,” which means that work based on yours must carry the same (or suitably similar) license as yours. This is much like the idea of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) for open source software.

Each of these categories can be toggled “on” and “off” using the CC license selection questionnaire, and each combination of desired rights has its own CC license, presented in full, specific, defensible legal jargon. They even give you pretty little buttons to use on web-based copies of your work that link to the license’s page on CC’s website and announce that you have released some (or none) of these rights to end users.

In addition to the buttons, there is a “deed” page on CC’s website for each of their licenses, which spells out in very simple and easy-to-understand language what you are permitted and not permitted to do with work carrying that license. Each deed is then linked to the full text of the license for the hardened lawyers among us.

If You Love Something, Let it Go…

I believe in sharing. In my Web Rules for Photographers article, I stated that “sharing is caring,” and I stand behind that. I am not anti-capitalist, nor would I deny anyone the fruits of their labor, but sometimes a little bit of giving goes a long way.

Let me break this down from a photographer’s perspective. I had the opportunity a couple of years ago to photograph the abandoned and decrepit Mansfield Training School, which was a hospital for mentally retarded children in Mansfield, Connecticut from around the turn of the century until about 1993. Of all my photographs, the ones I took inside that place seem to be the most popular, and generate the most traffic from web searches simply due to the scarcity of photographs and information about the place. I have been contacted by several people looking for directions to it and more information about it.

People who search Google for “Mansfield Training School” inevitably find my gallery, and I think that’s pretty sweet. Some time later, as someone was editing the “Mansfield, Connecticut” article on Wikipedia, they thought to mention the Mansfield Training School in its “Places of Interest” section, and linked to my gallery page, undoubtedly found in a search.

When a friend of mine pointed out that I had been linked from Wikipedia, I immediately thought two things simultaneously: 1) that’s really cool, and 2) can I make more out of this? Contributing to Wikipedia is one of those things that can be helpful to you and to others at the same time, and I like helping myself at least as much as I like helping others, so I decided to contribute more. What I actually did was to select a photo from my Mansfield Training School gallery and place it on the Wikipedia article page.

Wikipedia requires a fairly comprehensive copyright history for items submitted to its site, and for good reason: used as a reference, Wikipedia’s media items should be at least as free (as in speech) as items published in traditional print encyclopedias. To that end, they require a selection from a fairly long list of licenses from popular sources including Creative Commons, GNU, and others.

What this meant for me was that I would have to give up some rights to that particular work in order for it to appear on Wikipedia. Aside from the intangible exposure I would gain from it, and of course my own sense of altrusim, I hoped to see a bit of traffic from my submission.

Being the generous man that I am, I selected the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license (the link leads to the “deed” page, conveniently available in about 30 languages), which means that you are free to copy, distribute, transmit, remix, and adapt the work as long as what you create from it carries the same license and that I am credited for the original if displayed in any way.

I think that releasing a portion of your work in this way, especially in a high-traffic and high-exposure location such as Wikipedia, can definitely pay off in terms of recognition (both for the work itself as well as your reputation for generosity) and help to promote your other work, to which you retain all rights. Give a little, get a lot.

The way I see it, if everyone gives a little, we all gain a lot.

Postscript

If you are serious about protecting your copyrights, you may wish to officially register your work with the United States Copyright office. It isn’t terribly difficult or expensive, and it will give you huge leverage if you ever take a claim to court. For more information, check out Copyright Office Basics on the Copyright Office’s website.

1. Lawrence Lessig (2002) “Innovating Copyright”, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, 20:611-623

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My opinion is that digital photography is, and should be treated as, entirely comparable and identical to traditional photography. Although the differences in process and technique bear investigation for the ambitious viewer and may play a role in serious competition and critique as parameters for comparison, they have no more bearing on the effect of the work as would the brand of pencils used by an illustrator.

In the field of art, competition and formal review should command the examination of an artist’s basic choice of media and execution. While even the casual viewer can deepen the experience of a piece of art with knowledge of its process, that information is only helpful insofar as it expands appreciation or increases understanding; all artwork is comparable given only the experience of it intended by its creator.

To give an example of what I mean, consider two paintings. Each painting was created with different types of paint and different brushes, one on canvas and the other on paper, one representational and the other abstract, one lacquered and the other not. Can these two works of art be compared objectively as paintings? My gut says they can. The majority of casual viewers would never seek out these differences because the two works can be compared and contrasted, fairly and completely, simply on the basis of their appearance.

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Similarly in photography, two photographs may appear very much the same but may have been created in vastly different ways. In traditional photography alone, a myriad of chemicals and materials are available to the artist. Comparing two photographs, one traditionally printed and the other digitally created, should pose no problem to the viewer; only in formal competition and critique should this piece of information carry any weight, and that is also true for the painting example given above.

Digital photographers find themselves, in many cases, having to defend their work on the basis of its production methods rather than its artistic integrity, and it saddens me. When, in the history of art, have its methods come under such scrutiny? Producing new work in new ways has always been a core value of the field of art as a whole.

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What is saddening is not that a photographer would spend time and energy defending his or her craft, for that seems to me a noble endeavor. What saddens me is that anyone would spend time and energy criticizing digital photography, in particular, on the basis of its process rather than its results. Few other fields of art come under such scrutiny; perhaps because many fields of art are less commercialized or because they occupy areas of the art world not very well traveled by the mainstream. Whatever the reasons may be, I hope that the future brings a greater acceptance of digital photography as a photographic methodology, not to be treated differently than the many ways in which light has been captured and reproduced in the past.