The Study of the Effective Factors in Creating an Artistic Photo

Document Type : Original/Research/Regular Article

Author

Assistant Prof., Saba Faculty of Art & Architecture, Shahid Bahonar University, Kerman, Iran.

Abstract

As an art medium, photography is a representation system that, just like language, is capable of creating, presenting, and inducing several concepts concerning objects, peoples, events and even a special scene in various forms and in different qualities. In other words, human beings think through the latent capacities of language and use it with different functions such as typical dialogue, statement as well as artistic and poetic language. Likewise, a photographer, taking into account his/her goal and intention and the level of proficiency, knowledge, insight and creativity, can utilize technical and expressive facilities of photography. This way s/he gives to his/her work various qualities and functions ranging from representing, documenting, communicating, aesthetic, poetic, artistic and reporting.
Here the questions arise that what factors give an artistic nature and quality to a photo and what are the factors affecting the artistic photo? In order to answer these questions, this article aims to elaborate upon the factors influencing the production of artistic photo based on some major style-making factors in the field of linguistics that is: a particular attitude, selection and avoiding normality. As every medium has a set of unique and recognized features and understanding any art medium depends on understanding its main nature, capacities and constraints, the research first discusses the main basis and framework of photography to understand on which foundation the medium of photography depends and enjoys what elements, characteristics, functions and capabilities.
Then, the study continues with carrying out the analysis of artistic photos based on three main style-making factors of literature and language, that is, a particular attitude, selection and avoiding normality was. This research has been conducted employing descriptive-analytical and comparative method of research and data has been collected through desk study of library resources.
This way, first a platform would be created to help develop exploratory studies of literature and linguistics with photography, which seems to be lacking. Moreover, a theoretical tool will be devised for exploring a variety of images that help expand the concepts of analyzing and criticizing the photo and provide a theoretical and practical framework for photographers. Also, given that there seems to be insufficient awareness of the definitions and examples of creative and artistic photography in the Iranian photography community, conducting research on this concept might be helpful in developing the history of artistic photography in Iran.
Although there is no precise definition for some artistic expressions, but given the above issues it can be argued that artistic photo is special type of photography that is obtained from artistic action of a photographer, that is, creative and purposeful use of capacities and potential expressive capacities of photography. In other words, photography enjoys technical capabilities and potential expressive capacities to create artistic photo that include choosing a subject, selected frame (vertical or horizontal), angle of view (up or down), type of lens (normal, medium to telephoto) and the selected diaphragm (open or closed) and how a photo is edited (low or high contrast, white balance, color kelvin, frame work, shutter, time, …).
Artistic photo is result of a particular attitude of a photographer towards different subjects and the way of using facilities, capacities in selection and avoiding norms and rules in taking a photo that puts a photographer in the position of an artist who according his/ her skill, knowledge, attitude and creativity creates influential, motivating and lasting photos from the most common subjects instead of normal representation of objects and surrounding environment. This also provides the possibility for the photographer's audience to obtain a new and novel perception of the subject presented and think and contemplate on the photo.

Keywords

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Theoretical Principles of Visual Arts
Volume 4, Issue 2 - Serial Number 8
February 2020
Pages 141-154

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History

  • Receive Date: 15 July 2019
  • Revise Date: 06 October 2019
  • Accept Date: 02 November 2019

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