With the popularity of smartphones, it is becoming easier to take pictures.
Encounter a fun and good-looking scene, take out your mobile phone to take a picture, if you are satisfied, send a circle of friends, get a number of likes.
Then the photos are rarely turned over again until they are replaced by a new phone and disappear completely.
These casual photos, no one remembers, can not say whether it is good or not.
Will there be a standard for good photos?
There must be, but it will be quite difficult to judge.
In order to hide their thinking on this issue, many people often say, I am happy to play with it, so I don't know what a good photo is for the rest of my life.
If you really love photography, you'll struggle with this question.
With the progress of vision, it often leads to changes in shooting methods, which is often a process of self-painful struggle, and even if it seems to be regressing, it will also receive a lot of criticism.
Yet I thought that noble pain was more valuable than cheap pleasure.
The five realms of good photos listed in this article are purely edited by Kobayashi blindly, and have no scientific basis, for reference only.
1
The first: narrative photographs
Say what you want to say through photos.
This level, as long as you often pat and be afraid, can generally be achieved.
Preparing to eat a dish, meeting a beautiful girl, seeing a good landscape, taking pictures, whether it is a camera or a mobile phone, this is easy to say, but it is not easy.
Especially selfies, which one to choose, what filter to beautify, are all questions of painstaking consideration, and they cannot be relaxed.
You need to have basic composition skills, basic knowledge of light and shadow, can highlight the visual focus, and can not paste when it should not be pasted.
Such photographs already have the basic characteristics of the photographic language, which is different from the language of words, and through the organization of images, say what you want to say.
For such photos, you will usually get the following ratings:
"Envy you're out surfing again!"
"Hello beauty!"
"Looks delicious! Take me next time~"
To determine such a photo is very simple, send it to the circle of friends, do not type a word, see if everyone understands what you want to say.
2
Second: beautiful photos
After the first training, you will want the photos to be a little more beautiful, so you start chasing better camera phones and cameras, more professional lenses, and discuss the camera's imaging style, the out-of-focus and aperture of the lens all day long.
Start to pay attention to shooting methods and angles, through photography skills, a bland place to shoot dazzling, such as will find some flowers to do the foreground to shoot the scenery, will use the telephoto large aperture and reflector to shoot beautiful women, slow door shooting flow and so on. If the shooting is not good, it will also use post-processing tools to keep processing.
Such beautiful photos have the potential to be exhibited and awarded. The downside is that if you don't sign it, no one can imagine that you did it. Most photography enthusiasts stop at this stage, slowly lose interest in shooting, or take beautiful and impersonal photos with a lifetime of enthusiasm.
For such a photo, the comment you get will be:
"You look so good!"
"Wow, how did you do it? What phone is used? What camera lenses and parameters? Can you tell me the model number? ”
3
The third layer: the photographer's photo
Nowadays, photographers are a relatively widespread profession, and you can earn this title as long as you buy expensive equipment and hang it around your neck.
True photographers, however, are a group that is rarer than real painters or poets.
To earn the title of photographer, you can't rely on a heavy camera bag, long loose hair, a photographic vest stuffed with accessories, or a hearty laugh.
You have to have your own style.
On the basis of being able to make your photos beautiful, photographers will explore their own photography styles and language systems, and customers will come to visit you because of your unique style.
Of course, in fact, everyone will have their own personality, and there are things they want to say in the photos, but it is quite difficult for these personalities to be recognized by the public.
So you have to make your heart very good before the photos are beautiful.
Of course, it is okay to be dark, and there are many shady people in this world.
The evaluations that can be obtained at this stage are:
"You took a picture of it!"
"Not only is it beautiful, but it's also very interesting!"
"Wow, what a creative idea! How did you come up with that? ”
4
Fourth: moving photos
A good photo of this stage can also be called a photo of the heart.
The people who take these kinds of photographs are usually transformed from a successful photographer who is tired of pandering to the reader, so they begin to try to construct a language system that obeys their own heart, and some of them are quite difficult and complex.
These kinds of photographs are usually provocative to the traditional photographic system, sometimes it is simply incomprehensible, but if you look patiently, you may be able to find the inevitability of chance.
Of course, there are often some geniuses who have flown over the first three stages, but the talents are always jealous, and I often see these people shine for a while and then disappear, probably because it is too easy to come.
At this stage, the audience will be greatly divided.
Some people are shocked and fascinated by it, while others are not impressed, which is usually not related to the level of appreciation, but to everyone's life experience and inner world.
People who are now active in the photography academia and often win awards or exhibitions basically belong to this category, so there will be many people who complain that they can't understand the cutting-edge photography exhibition.
But there's no doubt about it, these people are fanatics, they're taking pictures with their lives, and you don't know how hard they try.
The usual evaluations are:
"I don't know!"
"I was so impressed by this picture that I stared at it for an afternoon."
Some of these photos will become classics of the times, and most of them will disappear with the passage of time.
They are all working hard to become the fifth realm.
5
Fifth: Historical photographs
When we look back at history, we will find that the photographer who can be widely remembered by people is already quite remarkable, and if there are ten photos that can be remembered by history, it must be a master.
Of course, for a photograph to enter history, it must have some qualities and a lot of luck.
Luck aside, traits can be analyzed: such a photograph is a portrayal of this era, or creates a new style of photography, or there is no reason why it is so classic.
No one knows what kind of photographs the future history will leave for our time, so I can't say anything.
Perhaps Roland Barthes's "piercing" theory will help, arguing that after a photograph is taken, the audience's interpretation is multi-faceted, the subject matter that the photographer is trying to express is often ignored, and the irrelevant details on the photo tend to arouse greater interest, which is the stab of the photo (oh, yes, this phenomenon is called on the Internet: Find the Highlights).
Being able to have a clear understanding of this era and deliberately leaving many thorns for future generations to see is a worthy attempt.
Of course, this is hard and hard, especially for many people who just love selfies and p-images.
So, let him go
Such photos, the evaluation may be:
"This picture of you captures this era."
"Many years later, I still remember your picture, which was our time."
My assessment of my own level of photography is hovering between the second and third realms.
What about you?
Kobayashi Photography | Left-behind elderly and children in Banliang Village, Chenzhou, Hunan Province, in May 2008. (This photo was selected as one of the 100 moving documentary moments of the fifty years of New China in China Photography News)
Kobayashi Photography | In December 2012, in the sea of grass in Bijie Weining, Guizhou, in the cold winter wind at dusk, the girl had nosebleeds and snot, and shivered with cold. She was five years old and as short as a normal three-year-old. Her wish was to be able to eat meat and candy. Left-behind elderly and children in Banliang Village, Chenzhou, Hunan.
Kobayashi Photography | In November 2014, the ancient town of Kanazawa in Qingpu, Shanghai, a place without tourists. Grandma asked me to take a frontal picture of her, and then asked me to send it to her—Chinese knew what it was for. After the shoot, I asked my grandmother to sit down in her old house where she lived alone and take this picture in the last rays of the sunset.
This article is excerpted from Kobayashi's photographic book "I want to take a picture of you"
For more Kobayashi works, long press the QR code to pay attention
【About the Author】
Kobayashi (Lin Dihuan)
Determined to be the most beautiful calligrapher in the field of photography and the best foodie in the manga industry, Kobayashi graduated from the Department of Clinical Medicine.
WeChat public number: inkcn020 Weibo: @Lin Dihuan