Ask Photo Guy

In his recent blog posting Richard Peters raises an important question. Can you go on a nature photography workshop and claim that you’ve photographed the wild animals? To me the answer is no. It’s like staging a picture and then calling it journalism instead of a portrait session. The difference is huge.

Personally, I think that it all goes back to honesty. Full disclosure is important, but not required. You don’t have to say that the picture was staged, as long as you are not contesting that it was a real thing. I went to a few zoos and preserves myself. It is a good practice. I can do it any time and I don’t need to catch a flight and take a vacation. However I never try to pass it for what it isn’t. Once again, be honest.

Read Richard’s wonderful article here for more details and checkout this great spoof.

In the latest Digital Photo Newsletter Vol 12, No 5 I’ve found a reference to a paper on “a novel computational means for evaluating the composition aesthetics of a given image based on measuring several well-grounded composition guidelines.” The abstract and the presentation video reminded me of a fictional book  – “Understanding Poetry” by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D. referenced in Dead Poet Societyby Tom Schulman. Here is an excerpt:

“To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme and figures of speech, then ask two questions:

1) How artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered and

2) How important is that objective?

Question 1 rates the poem’s perfection; question 2 rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining the poem’s greatness becomes a relatively simple matter.

If the poem’s score for perfection is plotted on the horizontal of a graph and its importance is plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness.
A sonnet by Byron might score high on the vertical but only average on the horizontal. A Shakespearean sonnet, on the other hand, would score high both horizontally and vertically, yielding a massive total area, thereby revealing the poem to be truly great. As you proceed through the poetry in this book, practice this rating method. As your ability to evaluate poems in this matter grows, so will, so will your enjoyment and understanding of poetry.”

All humor and fun aside, I’ve found the paper pretty interesting and I think the paper is worth the read if you are interested in computational image analysis. I am. The project ventures into something new and unique, and I’m seriously considering giving it a try. I’m curious what would happen if the algorithm described would be let loose on some of my pictures.

You can check out the projects website here.
If you don’t feel like reading the paper, at least watch the video.

A direct link to the paper: (low resolution)