“Paul: Jon, Your close-up of petals is quite beautiful, but I suggest you consider that design rules are made for a reason. To have chickens blurred in the background creates an unrelated issue. It would be writing a story, one paragraph about a dog, the next about Mt. Everest, the next about the dog… it derogates from the beauty of the poppy and creates a chaotic tension that doesn’t please.”
I sent my Leica photography teacher a copy of Paul’s message, and his response had me laughing:
“Oh, my God,” he said (he has a master of arts degree from Columbia), “that’s so stupid. That’s the whole point of the picture; it’s what makes it so interesting; the hens with their butts in the air are a perfect backdrop to the beautiful, crystal clear poppies. Good job. Never listen to people who talk about design rules. They are not your friend.”
Well, I thought, for once, somebody else was sharper in replying to criticism than I was.
But I don’t think I could have said it better. I pay no attention to design rules and hope I never do well. I’m’ not interested in pleasing Paul; I’m interested in pleasing me.
I appreciate Paul’s civility and his kind words about my close-ups. But his message reminded me to give thanks for never having read a design book or taken a creative writing class, or finishing college. His is the voice of the over-educated man.
I can never imagine sending a letter like that to anyone.
To me, an outlier in all things certain, design rules are an enemy of creativity, used as a club to make people feel stupid and to do what other people tell them rather than what their heart and soul tell them.
Don’t be yourself is the message. Be the person someone else tells you to be. Welcome to America.
I went to hear John Updike give a talk on writing once, and his advice has resonated with me through the years: “anybody who tells you what to write is the enemy,” he said, “avoid them as if they are enemies of your creativity because they are.”
He said that every great writer he had read made their own rules. Now that I think about it, so did every great photographer.
I will never get to be a great writer or photographer in this world, but sometimes I can be a good one. And I can always choose to be free and be me. And I will. That is my power and salvation.
The most creative things in the world come from the gut. Creativity is about individual and instinct, passions and heartbeats, not about rules in design books.
I am proud to say I never tell other people how to take a picture or what to write in a paragraph. I can’t fathom sending a message to someone telling them their creation broke some stranger’s rules or to babble on about dogs and Mt. Everest.
Creativity is the last of individual sports and passions in a culture that worships conformity, security, and market research.
I think. We each follow our own guts and spirits and make our own design “rules.” Some of us even get to write books for a living and take all the photographs we want.
I asked Maria if she had ever used a design book to make one of her quilts, and I almost got a bowl of soup thrown at me.
The term “design rules” turns my stomach a bit.
It makes me feel like I’m at a Marxist college or re-education center, getting the rules about what I should write or take a picture of. I don’t know why Paul wrote it, but it gave me a chill. Design rules are a suffocating idea for me.
Yesterday, some professor e-mailed me suggesting I violated the “third” photography rule, which says every photo should be conceived in three parts. EVERY photo.
Someone else wrote and said books on photography – design books – said that every good photograph should have a vital element in the far right upper corner. I answered that I never read design books, and one woman wrote to say I was being mean, that he had a good point.
I give thanks that I don’t read design books on how-to-books about writing. I am free to be stupid, confused, chaotic, and even to “derogate” from the beauty of a flower. I never finished college, and I am coming to believe it did me no harm.
Nobody ever got to tell me the rules, so I never learned them. Thank God for that.
I am a passionate follower of the Beavis & Butthead role of creativity: because I am stupid, I am free, because I don’t know what I am supposed to think, I am free to think.
This gets me in all kinds of trouble, but when I read a message like Paul’s, I think of all the writers, artists, and photographers who have been pecked to death by other people’s rules and do’s and dont’s.
They are not your friends, creative people.
I don’t want to teach photography or lecture about it, I want to do it. I don’t want to please Paul; I’m sorry he doesn’t like my picture. I happen to love it, just like my teacher did. Without the hens, it’s just another pretty flower photo.
guess what?
chicken butt!
Oh my gosh! Armchair photography experts, meh. Jon, continue with your beautiful photos and listen only to your gut, your heart, and your art. We art ignoramuses are loving your compositions!
When I started writing for money, I felt unequal. Yes, I had a degree but I was in my late forties. There’s a Wisconsin writer who wrote that he couldn’t diagram a sentence. In junior high I was bad at this too. But his words and your words about not going to college makes me feel better. Maybe creativity comes from the soul not a book.
Design Rules spread well beyond photos and writing!
Have you ever happily used an app for a long time until one day an update changes the way it looks and how it’s controlled?
How about the flight controls of the 737 Max? Someone thought it was a good idea to change the flight controls and layout that had been used for years to something that required lots of training.
These people are known by many names: UX Architect, UX Engineer, UX Guru, UX Designer, etc.
Most (not all) of them fit a narrow demographic and love following the latest hot trends in design, rather than just sticking with what works. There’s an inherent conflict of interest in their job!
An interesting point of view Dolf, thanks.
sorry, but this post is hilarious! I have never been a proponent of following rules or guidelines…..whether social, creatively, or in any other way. Have felt like a black sheep much of my life……but hey- I like myself just fine most of the time and could give two hoots about what others think. I think that this photo is absolutely stunning! the poppy *pops* and I believe this was your goal………..which you achieved beautifully! your eye is uncanny……keep ’em coming! YOU are the person that matters, creatively…..bottom line!
Susan M
There is humor in it, for sure..We have to keep laughing..
Wow, the critics are never-ending and insatiable. Yikes. Stuart Wilde once said something like, if you’re a bit dim, be grateful, the world won’t upset you like it does the academics. I say AMEN to that! (oops, a sentence that ends with a preposition, gasp!) I LOVE this picture with the girls in the background – I find your shots so interesting precisely because you don’t stage them. They are real, like your words.
I don’t need to analyze a piece of art or a photo. I just want to look at it and feel something. There will either be an immediate impact or there won’t. Your floral photos are beautiful and joyous and make me feel good. Keep’em coming.
Thank you…
I love your photos Jon. If a photo brings joy to the photographer and evokes emotion to the viewer then yes, yes, yes! Keep taking your great pictures, they bring so much joy to many of us!
Jon, I have a diploma in Design from the Ontario College of Art, now Art & Design University. Do NOT give up on Design books. There are some very good basic design lessons in some of these books. Which I know you won’t be bothered reading given you don’t have a reason to be doing so. Your composition is delightful and as much as I don’t want to be critical of another’s opinion, the blurred hens and grass are a beautiful background for the sharp precise poppies in the front. I think it’s quite clever. And design-wise, well, I guess we all see things according to our own perceptions, but I sure wouldn’t make a comment such as was made to you as being an expert observation. It doesn’t fit with my learning at College. I look for the composition in a lot of your pictures and to me, you’re very aware of the compositional elements in your picture-taking.
Sandy Proudfoot, Canada
Good caution, Sandra, thanks..
Jon,
The picture is perfect just as it is. It could only be better if the chickens had been as detailed as the flowers. (To me, chickens are amazing animals and they deserve to be in focus).
I’m not an artist and I’ve never taken a design class—- I just love chickens!
And it’s your photo composition (!) that’s causing the “ chaotic tension that doesn’t please”? Ironic. I think it’s a great contrast; the focused color in front of the blurred black/white. (Wow. I wonder what the reverse would look like – blurry poppies in front of the chickens clearly focused……or did I miss that one?) Several of the favorite pictures I have displayed in my life are blurred – but it is the subject that brings such joy that its emotional content vastly outweighs any technical deficiency. (I also like your blurry flowerbed photo with Maria’s fuchsia shirt centering it with the pink flowers in the foreground.)
And nothing has ever irked me more than having a great unposed photographic opportunity nearly realized only to have some *helpful* person call out to and disturb the subject to “look at….” – and completely ruin it. Let alone count some three rules or whatever, or, wait all day until something makes it’s way into the upper right hand corner….. Sorry – but seriously!!?!
Composition is not about reading a speculative design textbook. It’s studying the brain to see how people react to composition, how certain artists lead the viewers’ gaze around the piece/foto and which is more pleasurable.
I don’t see an echo of hen butts in the blossom. But maybe if one stares long enough…..
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33828794/
Becca, thanks; I don’t understand why I need to know that to take a photo or pause to think about it. I’d rather take pictures and let people make up their minds about whether they like it or not. So far, my readers do not seem troubled by my approach; I’m not pitching to academics or theorists; people can decide for themselves if it’s pleasurable or not and tell me if they choose. I don’ need other people’s values in my head when I hit the shutter. If you do, that’s okay, and I don’t tell you or other people what to do. I’m sure it’s valuable to many people, I’m just not one of them.
How funny. I follow another writer who has quite successfully written about dogs, the Himalayan mountains and then about more dogs. He seems to be managing his life journey with that horrible contradiction just fine.
This is one of your best photos ever!
I always stiffen and hold my breath when someone says: “I hope you don’t mind me saying this”. It is usually followed by something insulting. It always hurts. I don’t think you are even getting that from advise givers.
I decided to take a photo of my pot of nasturtiums (inspired by you) … I can’t post it here but I assure you there is a blurred shape of a watering can in the background and even a brown leaf I chose not to cut out! So there design freaks.
🙂
This is one of my favorite photos and posts of all your blog entries! I was at a local park yesterday, giving a photography lesson to a client and told her what my first photography teacher told me…”yes, there are rules for composition – rule of thirds, and other theories. But, I like to think that rules are made to be broken!” I loved her philosophy then, and love it even more now 20-plus years later. Keep up the good work! 🙂
Thank you, Dog, a great message..
Beautiful photo, Jon! I am reminded of the old adage, “Rules are made to be broken.”
Jon…
Rules are not laws. Nobody will be jailed for breaking them. At worst, an individual could be expelled from the promulgating community.
Conventions do exist for graphic design professionals, for their work performed as a contracted service. But what rules govern an individual’s right to creative photography? It appears those comments were someone’s suggestions, for the recipient to accept or reject at face value.
Photography involves both technology and art. Technical issues, often expressed as numbers, are more easily addressed. But the art of photography, dealing with the story behind, or the emotion invoked by a photograph, provides less clarity. Aesthetics resist words and numbers.
A successful photograph combines both technical and artistic proficiency. As Ansel Adams reportedly remarked, “there is nothing as useless as a sharp photograph of a fuzzy concept.”
Hi Jon, I hope this post is not too late to get to you, but I’ll send it anyway. Years ago I remember writing a paper in a philosophy class titled “Art Must Serve the Artist”. I don’t see how it could be otherwise. After college I met a young woman studying painting privately after working in the office all day. She said her teacher told her she was terrible and that she should quit, and asked me if she should. I said, “No, you need a decent teacher.” I left that job but always wondered what happened to her art.
Great message, Arah, thank you…