Talk Art Section???

[Alastair]

This kind of discussion made me admit I actually enjoy art because it was confusing and thought provoking

And this probably also explains why some people struggle with art. Photography can be taken as a very literal art form that records what it sees and is immune to interpretation, but that forgets all the choices (or defaults) made or accepted by the photographer that define the end result. Even very simple choices such as "Do I stand here? or do I stand there?" influence the resulting image and the meaning/interpretation that the viewer may draw from the result.

 

[CheekyAngels]

Photography can be taken as a very literal art form that records what it sees and is immune to interpretation, but that forgets all the choices (or defaults) made or accepted by the photographer that define the end result.

I completely agree with you.... From here we can look at an example of cctv footage as something that alledges to prove a person is at a certain place in time, which completely disagrees with the "this is not a pipe" statement - ergo art

 

[CheekyAngels]

I'm as conflicted with art as I am with science in that I can grasp the fundamentals of science however I still deep down want to believe in mermaids /vampires and alien civilisations - call it mad and bizarre but I'm just another strand of human nature that finds a certain comfort within the uncanny & unexplainable and that inturn can be conveyed within photography - it may not be traditional "art" but it's my own interpretation of certain things I want to photograph

That's what I love about the diverse amount of creations - why do we do it.... What informs us... If not art.... What is the driving force?? It's interesting to know

 

[ancient_mariner]

I'm as conflicted with art as I am with science in that I can grasp the fundamentals of science however I still deep down want to believe in mermaids /vampires and alien civilisations - call it mad and bizarre but I'm just another strand of human nature that finds a certain comfort within the uncanny & unexplainable and that inturn can be conveyed within photography - it may not be traditional "art" but it's my own interpretation of certain things I want to photograph

That's what I love about the diverse amount of creations - why do we do it.... What informs us... If not art.... What is the driving force?? It's interesting to know

Science is what I do for a living.

I want some of my photographs to communicate, but I also don't want them to be 'art' because............. it's hard to say exactly, but calling something art seems to devalue it, to imply that it's false and a fiction of imagination instead of something of value and substance. You *could* consider it a form of anti-punk, I suppose, of resistance against the anarchy and hopelessness of art.



Actually my photos are just snaps, so no chance of them being art.

 

[PaulButler]

sorry for the snip ...

but calling something art seems to devalue it, to imply that it's false and a fiction of imagination instead of something of value and substance.

Is this just perception though? Or perhaps a lack of knowledge or understanding? I would hazard a guess that not all art has a particularly high value and that likewise just because it is art doesn't mean it is good art

 

[sirch]

it's hard to say exactly, but calling something art seems to devalue it, to imply that it's false and a fiction of imagination instead of something of value and substance

I have always been intrigued by art but a decade or more ago I decided to actively learn more about it and I hit upon the notion that, for me at least being an engineer, art is the mathematics of emotion.

Maths is an abstract way of representing the physical world and we used it to concisely convey some very powerful and complex concepts (e.g. E=mc^2). Similarly art, or at least art that means something to me, seems to be an abstract way of the artist conveying an emotional state. How one person feels in a given place, at a given time, in a given situation is very hard to convey to another person, we have no telepathy and words, unless we write a novel, often do not seem adequate. I’m fairly sure most people can understand the emotion conveyed by Munch’s The Scream.

So I would separate art from artifice, good art IMHO may be artificial but it is not just a made up fiction, it is there to represent something very real.

 

[Alastair]

Actually my photos are just snaps, so no chance of them being art.

Snaps are art too..

All photography is art, but some is labeled as Art.

If you look at the previous thread, many of the portraits in the Taylor Wessing derive from documentary projects that might be regarded as journalism but are seen as art within the context of an exhibition in a gallery.

 

[sirch]

Snaps are art too..

All photography is art, but some is labeled as Art.

Sorry but I really don't agree, I would agree with

"Snaps can be art too. All photography can be art"

All photography is craft, just like all pottery is craft. To be art as I understand it it really needs to be made as art by an artist for artistic reasons and accepted by others (e.g. a gallery) as art.

 

[Ed Sutton]

Photography is a medium. Unlike other graphic media it can also be used in a documentary (in the broadest sense) mode, as art, as illustration, as.... Not all photography is art just as not all drawing is art. But, perhaps unusually, a photograph can be shifted from one mode to another by altering its presentation.

 

[ancient_mariner]

sorry for the snip ...

Is this just perception though? Or perhaps a lack of knowledge or understanding? I would hazard a guess that not all art has a particularly high value and that likewise just because it is art doesn't mean it is good art

It is perception, but you could also call it reaction.

 

[Sejanus Aelianus]

There's a problem when 'artists' come up against 'photographers' that a few people have got close to on this thread. 'Artists' have a tendency, though not all and not every time, to come across as egotistical fantasists because they can be very dismissive of the person who looks at a piece of art and sees a pile of bricks. 'Photographers' have a tendency, though not all and not every time, to come across as trolls and trouble makers when they look at the pile of bricks and say "that's a not very well photographed pile of bricks".

If you want discussions about art on any public forum, where both groups are present, both sides need to be a lot less wedded to their positions as, otherwise, the pile of bricks will quickly become kinetic art and casualties will result.

In all seriousness, I've not yet seen a discussion on art that's deteriorated, where both sides haven't been equally to blame. This is generally because they've reverted to type instead of trying to understand the other person's position.

How you can deal with this without heavy moderation is, I'm glad to say, not my problem.

 

[sirch]

@Sejanus Aelianus I don't think anyone minds a robust debate but people just turning up and saying "it's s***e" and even worse, backing that up with "I know nuffin about art" when clearly a lot of quite thoughtful and intelligent people think otherwise is just utterly pointless. I don't think anyone who is interested in art hasn't heard all the "emperors new clothes" arguments before and indeed thought them themselves. Was that not one of the points Duchamp was making with his urinal.

By all means let's have a debate but the trite and Pavlovian trotting out of the same old tropes just amounts to vandalism and destroys threads where those with an interest in the subject might otherwise have a debate.

BTW a pile of bricks can be both art and a pile of bricks and there is no rule that says Art has to be good or that you have to like it. If a group of 5 year-olds get up on stage an play their recorders nobody asks "is it music?"

 

[ancient_mariner]

@Sejanus AelianusBTW a pile of bricks can be both art and a pile of bricks and there is no rule that says Art has to be good or that you have to like it. If a group of 5 year-olds get up on stage an play their recorders nobody asks "is it music?"

That's kind of the problem, because you know what the 5 year olds produce isn't music - speaking as a musician on their way to a gig - even if it is to the ears of the creators of these child prodigies. But no-one seems able to do the same thing about stuff that inhabits the space of 'is it art or a pile of bricks". Those who do recognise a pile of bricks aren't going to acclaim the astonishing counterpoint created in the shifting rhythm, carefully nuanced microtonally altered notes and seemingly casual lack of of attention to archaic rules regarding timing.

 

[sirch]

Those who do recognise a pile of bricks aren't going to acclaim the astonishing counterpoint created in the shifting rhythm, carefully nuanced microtonally altered notes and seemingly casual lack of of attention to archaic rules regarding timing

I like that (n)

 

[Alastair]

That's kind of the problem, because you know what the 5 year olds produce isn't music - speaking as a musician on their way to a gig - even if it is to the ears of the creators of these child prodigies

At what point does it become music? - you imply that somewhere along a spectrum between five year old with recorders and a concert at the Albert Hall there's a point at which one thing is not music and the next thing is.

For regular listeners to In Out Time, this is Sorites paradox discussed just last week

 

[Sejanus Aelianus]

I don't think anyone minds a robust debate but people just turning up and saying "it's s***e" and even worse, backing that up with "I know nuffin about art" when clearly a lot of quite thoughtful and intelligent people think otherwise is just utterly pointless.

Which is exactly the point I was making.

 

[ancient_mariner]

I like that (n)

And likewise

Similarly art, or at least art that means something to me, seems to be an abstract way of the artist conveying an emotional state.

And I didn't even use the arty b*****ks generator.

At what point does it become music? - you imply that somewhere along a spectrum between five year old with recorders and a concert at the Albert Hall there's a point at which one thing is not music and the next thing is.

For regular listeners to In Out Time, this is Sorites paradox discussed just last week

And having returned from an evening of playing something barely even musical (acoustic slide guitar in a gospel blues band) I was asking myself exactly this question as I was getting out of the car just now. And not finding a simple answer. There's probably a mathematical goodness of fit test one could create and apply to music in various forms, where one could determine confidence intervals within which what was heard was probably music and outside of which it probably wasn't: that might include 5 year olds with recorders and Fado.

But OTOH I'm not sure there's a spectrum as such - more a line with music on one side and non-music on the other. Sometimes musicians cross that line, either because they think they're creating a new form or because they're self absorbed and having too much fun to stop, and the buying public go along with it because it seems cool and the drugs they're taking tell them it's OK. There's a video of Johnny Winter (a guitar player whose stuff I love) playing a gig in Scandinavia where he goes a bit off piste and the audience look like they're just bored - he sounds like not-music at this point, and I rather suspect he'd crossed that boundary. It's almost de rigeur for that "push it all the way to 11" guitar solo that so many of us have been guilty of in the past, to stop making music and pretend to be an aeroplane, a duck or an explosion instead. But we're all having so much fun, doing so well and making the promoter money (not in my case) that no-one will tell us to stop being non-musical, and everyone is happy to keep buying albums because NME told us to.

I dunno.

Technical ability is a fundamental for making music, but formal training completely un-necessary. I have a moderately good ear, and one county-school concert I sat through at the new theatre Oxford actually hurt, the string players were so bad. I wonder if the art world has lost the plot at some stage - something Duchamp appeared to recognise with his urinal, and more recently the boy with the glasses - but the sheer momentum of the whole thing has never met enough resistance to stop it?

 

[ancient_mariner]

At risk of going places it's not helpful to go now this thread has gone quietly to sleep, I read a comment in The Week magazine that seemed to have a bearing on this conversation.

"But is it art?" A tricky question, yet we know what it's driving at.

The reason people paint dance, make up stories or write music wish to be called "artists" is that art, unlike commerce, is in some sense sanctified - even for the dyed-in-the-wool secularists. It transcends the mundane. In a capitalistic age dominated by profit and technology - by what the great sociologist Max Weber called "the disenchantment of the world" - it is art, Weber insisted, that "provides salvation from the routines of everyday life". Art holds out a vision of an alternative world. It revives enchantment.

But does it? There's little sign of those "sublime values", the ones Weber felt had "retreated from public life", in contemporary art galleries. Whatever emotions are aroused in contemplating the buttocks splayed on page 32 (turner prize work) enchantment isn't one of them. Struggling ever to polish the turd or corporate ehxibitionism, the art critics can do no better than praise the Turner prizeexhibit for it's "humour, bombast and ambition".

He then goes on to suggest that Jeremy Corbyn is a source of transcendence for his followers.

The political art is of no interest, but for a long time I've wondered how the various painters could be held in such high esteem when people producing not dissimilar photographic work were often being called technicians who were good at their craft but not creative. It's hard to create a 'transcendency test' that can have any meaningful output and, just as whether you love or loathe Corbyn, some will find certain work tedious while others will find that transcendent quality in it. But this does help ME when it comes to deciding whether a picture could have value or not. And it does convince me that my previous thoughts here were correct - that the art train has in fact missed that particular station and never even noticed.

 

[simon ess]

The person you quote has accepted the invitation that anything presented as art offers. The invitation to think.

IMO that's all it really does.

How the individual responds to that invitation tells us more about that individual than the work, or body of work, being responded too.

That is one reason why I love art.

 

[sirch]

Thanks for posting that @ancient_mariner, it's going to take some time to digest, it's late and I need to read it with a fresher mind.

 

[sirch]

The full Weber quote would seem to be:

The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world. Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental.

I suppose art faces the dilemma of repeating the same thing over and over or going off an finding new ground and it would seem that in the twentieth century that new ground was increasingly found, as Weber says, in the intimate, the personal, what the artist brought and gave of themselves rather than the monumental.

I've wondered how the various painters could be held in such high esteem when people producing not dissimilar photographic work were often being called technicians who were good at their craft but not creative

Gallery/institutional art is elitist, it must be simply because some works are chosen (often because of the artist, not the work it would seem) and some are not. It can’t be any coincidence that once photography started to take off painting moved away from the figurative towards the more abstract and so I suppose there was a reaction against photography because of that, something so mass producible could not be elite. After all most photography would seem to be craft rather than art.


I find it also interesting that where photography is taken more seriously there is a focus on the process as well as the content. This, I think, goes back to the personal, what the artist brought to the work as an artist. In taking a snap on a digital camera, whilst the photographer may have seen or even to some extent arranged the composition, the photograph may have little of the artists touch upon it. However if a photographer prepares their own glass plates, goes to the trouble of setting up a large format camera, takes the image and then processes it themselves, they are closely involved and have a deterministic input throughout the making of the “work of art”. I’m not saying I agree that this is necessary to make photographic art but it seems to be, at least for some factions of the art world, where we are at.

 

[ancient_mariner]

Thanks Chris, both for hunting down the Weber quote and also your thoughts here.

If I may crudely re-interpret what you've said, for something photographic to be considered art it must have been harder to produce than simply taking a photo, tweaking & then exporting from lightroom. Unless the right people took the snap, or course.

I'm inclined to head back to the thing of art being transcendental, rather than merely thought provoking or hard work (or shot by certain people). But that completely undermines the establishment, and is unquantifiable (as well as being variable from person to person).

The other aspect of the piece I quoted was about the WHY we get so grumpy over whether something was considered art or not. The author talked about art as 'sanctifying' a piece, and that helped explain why sometimes declaring something to be 'art' has provoked such a strong reaction in me in opposition to such an idea. Sanctify a giant bum? Really? And conversely declaring something like the landscape and reflection work produced by Steve/ST4 (for example) to be just a product of craft completely misses the transcendental aspect of his work. The fact that anyone who rocked up at the same moment with a camera could have produced the 'same' image doesn't matter.

 

[Alastair]

I find it also interesting that where photography is taken more seriously there is a focus on the process as well as the content. This, I think, goes back to the personal, what the artist brought to the work as an artist. In taking a snap on a digital camera, whilst the photographer may have seen or even to some extent arranged the composition, the photograph may have little of the artists touch upon it. However if a photographer prepares their own glass plates, goes to the trouble of setting up a large format camera, takes the image and then processes it themselves, they are closely involved and have a deterministic input throughout the making of the “work of art”. I’m not saying I agree that this is necessary to make photographic art but it seems to be, at least for some factions of the art world, where we are at.

You risk confusing the creative process with the physical process. The relevant process in this situation is that which leads to the presentation of the work as art, which isn't the same as the process that produced the image - but may include it (not always).

 

[viewfromthenorth]

You risk confusing the creative process with the physical process. The relevant process in this situation is that which leads to the presentation of the work as art, which isn't the same as the process that produced the image - but may include it (not always).

I'd tend to agree, to a point. In the art / fine art worl, it's more about the idea and who did it, than the craft or the difficulty in the execution. However, as photographers we may have more appreciation of the craft involved in the creation of a photograph and / or the aesthetics.

 

[sirch]

But I think there is more creative control and more creative input if a photographer is more involved in the process. I doubt we would think much of an artist who arranged a still life and then got someone else to paint a picture of it (no doubt someone will find an example of exactly this in a gallery somewhere, and I am aware that there are artists who leav detailed instrucitons for others to reproduce a particular work). The BJP aticle that started all this also seems quite keen to tell us about the processes used.

@Alastair / @viewfromthenorth perhaps you could expand on how the physical process is separate from the creative process?

 

[ancient_mariner]

But I think there is more creative control and more creative input if a photographer is more involved in the process. I doubt we would think much of an artist who arranged a still life and then got someone else to paint a picture of it (no doubt someone will find an example of exactly this in a gallery somewhere, and I am aware that there are artists who leav detailed instrucitons for others to reproduce a particular work). The BJP aticle that started all this also seems quite keen to tell us about the processes used.

You mean like Gregory Crewdson, who doesn't press the shutter button or do his own PP, but instead directs everything into place & then has other people take the shot etc?

 

[sirch]

If I may crudely re-interpret what you've said, for something photographic to be considered art it must have been harder to produce than simply taking a photo, tweaking & then exporting from lightroom. Unless the right people took the snap, or course.

I'm not saying it's a view I espouse, but it seems to be what I observe in practice. In lieu of heavy involvement in the photographic process adding something else personal to the photograph such as body parts, family relationships, etc. seems acceptable.

And conversely declaring something like the landscape and reflection work produced by Steve/ST4 (for example) to be just a product of craft completely misses the transcendental aspect of his work

As you said further up creating a 'transcendency test' would be hard. Whilst I appreciate the dedication that goes into ST4's work, in all honesty it does nothing for me and I think that is because there is no overt creativity in it, I'm sure there is creativity but the end result looks like a perfect reproduction of a landscape scene and feels somewhat characterless to me. But I accept my views are unusual, I thought the 4th photo in This Threadthis thread was absolutely stunning and would happily hang it on the wall but the majority preferred different photos in that set.

 

[john.margetts]

But I think there is more creative control and more creative input if a photographer is more involved in the process. I doubt we would think much of an artist who arranged a still life and then got someone else to paint a picture of it (no doubt someone will find an example of exactly this in a gallery somewhere, and I am aware that there are artists who leav detailed instrucitons for others to reproduce a particular work).

Most of the Old Masters had employees who did most of the donkey work of a painting, the said Old Master doing the layout and delicate details.

 

[ancient_mariner]

I thought the 4th photo in This Threadthis thread was absolutely stunning and would happily hang it on the wall but the majority preferred different photos in that set.

That and the first very much worked for me too.

With ST4 I almost find that some of his image are an ideal that reality can't live up to - too perfect to be real life. That's not a criticism at all. We've also photographed the same place once on eparate occasions and come away with fairly similar images, which was also interesting.

 

[Alastair]

@Alastair / @viewfromthenorth perhaps you could expand on how the physical process is separate from the creative process?

Yes, but I'll have to think about it.

As a preliminary answer. The physical process is what we almost exclusively talk about on TP - settings and gear. We very rarely talk about the creative process of why we take photos, or what our photography means to us,or what we're saying through our photography.

The Craft is pressing the shutter, the Art is thinking about why we do it.

 

[ancient_mariner]

Yes, but I'll have to think about it.

As a preliminary answer. The physical process is what we almost exclusively talk about on TP - settings and gear. We very rarely talk about the creative process of why we take photos, or what our photography means to us,or what we're saying through our photography.

The Craft is pressing the shutter, the Art is thinking about why we do it.

Tha's interesting in itself, since my *perception* is that people often explain why they took what they did, and it's when they fail to do so that critique is much more difficult.

 

[viewfromthenorth]

I'll have a go. These are thoughts off the top of my head, I may well expand on them after some cogitation.

The physical process of taking the photograph, is quite mechanical, even for the photographer coating his own glass plates. There is some clear overlap with the creative process, as that outputs from that could influence choice of exposure, etc.

The creative process is, in my view the nebulous act of having the idea / seeing the image in the minds eye or in the field and then bringing that concept to reality. This process could include the creative choices in exposing the image, composition, how to use the light (artificial or natural) post processing, printing and how the image is used afterwards. This could be as a standalone image or as part of a series which leads to further creative choices in terms of image selection for the body of work. There are clearly many variables here depending on the type of photography i.e. A studio photographer would differ from that of a documentary photographer in some aspects.

 

[sirch]

It's quite subtle, isn't it? If I tweak the shutter speed to get just the right amount of blur on a moving subject, that could be a creative choice. If I use a shutter speed that someone told me would look good, that is not a creative choice. But in both cases the shutter speed may well turn out to be the same.

 

[ancient_mariner]

A problem for people who wish to create art and have that perspective is that the 'art' is only valid if they intended to take the picture that way - creating an image by serendipity invalidates its 'art-worthiness'. There was someone on here who posted an image of a man holding a child - lovely shot, but they said it was just take by chance, and therefore didn't count.

 

[Alastair]

A problem for people who wish to create art and have that perspective is that the 'art' is only valid if they intended to take the picture that way.

Which is a danger of over-interpreting initial answers to your question. It's such a complex subject I almost wish I hadn't answered before taking a fortnight to try and marshal everything together. Having the camera and being in the right mindset to see/anticipate the shot is a form of creative presentation. The circumstance you describe is similar to the creative mode of street photography - a photography art genre I must admit to being in two minds about.

Snapshots, serendipity and of-the-moment photos can be art. There's even a term for it that's mentioned many times in the GOP documentary series, it's vernacular photography. And if vernacular photographs can be presented as art by someone labelling themselves as an artist, the question becomes why aren't more of the photographers on forums like TP seeing their work as art? Mostly I think it's because it means thinking about the photographs they're taking, thinking about them in series and collections, thinking about what they mean when presented together. Thinking about making selections to create groups and collections that convey meaning/interpretation, being self-critical and self-editing.

 

[viewfromthenorth]

I think we're going in several different directions here, but it's all good

As a follow up to what Alistair said earlier, the physical process is the 'how', the creative process is the 'why'. Personally I find the why infinitely more interesting than the how, as the how is a means to an end (like the camera equipment) in allowing me to articulate my idea.

I do recognise though that for many, the craft, the process can be an end in itself. I remember back in my camera club days seeing a darkroom print of a lifeboat that many were drooling over, but it did nothing for me. It was by all accounts a technical masterclass of the darkroom, but beyond that it was just a picture of a lifeboat that lacked any real substance in my eyes.

 

[Ed Sutton]

Snapshots, serendipity and of-the-moment photos can be art. There's even a term for it that's mentioned many times in the GOP documentary series, it's vernacular photography. And if vernacular photographs can be presented as art by someone labelling themselves as an artist, the question becomes why aren't more of the photographers on forums like TP seeing their work as art? Mostly I think it's because it means thinking about the photographs they're taking, thinking about them in series and collections, thinking about what they mean when presented together. Thinking about making selections to create groups and collections that convey meaning/interpretation, being self-critical and self-editing.

Most hobbyist photographers seem to be interested in making single pictures. Dare I say it, single stunning pictures. It's what the populist photography magazines tend to concentrate on, what camera club competitions are run by for the most part. One picture at a time.
.
Which is, perhaps, why the projects section is fairly quiet.

But when it comes to making art I'm with these two:

“What is the art experience about? Really, I’m not interested in making “Art” at all. I never, ever, think about it. To say the word “Art”, it’s almost like a curse on art.”
Joel Meyerowitz

“Don’t try to be an artist. Find the thing within you that needs to be expressed. You might find it is art.”
Duane Michals

Just make pictures of stuff that interests you and try to form a body of work that stands together, rather than a collection of random images.

 

[viewfromthenorth]

Just make pictures of stuff that interests you and try to form a body of work that stands together, rather than a collection of random images.

Yup, that's me. To be honest it's all I have bloody time for. Better to be average or above in one genre than mediocre in several has been my way of thinking.

 

[ancient_mariner]

Which is a danger of over-interpreting initial answers to your question. It's such a complex subject I almost wish I hadn't answered before taking a fortnight to try and marshal everything together. Having the camera and being in the right mindset to see/anticipate the shot is a form of creative presentation. The circumstance you describe is similar to the creative mode of street photography - a photography art genre I must admit to being in two minds about.

Snapshots, serendipity and of-the-moment photos can be art. There's even a term for it that's mentioned many times in the GOP documentary series, it's vernacular photography. And if vernacular photographs can be presented as art by someone labelling themselves as an artist, the question becomes why aren't more of the photographers on forums like TP seeing their work as art? Mostly I think it's because it means thinking about the photographs they're taking, thinking about them in series and collections, thinking about what they mean when presented together. Thinking about making selections to create groups and collections that convey meaning/interpretation, being self-critical and self-editing.

And I'm glad that you did answer without taking a fortnight.

To answer why more photographers on TP dfon't see their work as art, I suspect it's because they've been told by a couple of key people that it's at best, just craft, and that they can't consider themselves artists because they don't see the world properly through the right training. Or in some cases - me certainly, until I came across that quote - that art had become something shameful and almost degrading, rather than something uplifting. I'd reached the point where I didn't want anything to do with that.

 

[ancient_mariner]

I think we're going in several different directions here, but it's all good

As a follow up to what Alistair said earlier, the physical process is the 'how', the creative process is the 'why'. Personally I find the why infinitely more interesting than the how, as the how is a means to an end (like the camera equipment) in allowing me to articulate my idea.

I do recognise though that for many, the craft, the process can be an end in itself. I remember back in my camera club days seeing a darkroom print of a lifeboat that many were drooling over, but it did nothing for me. It was by all accounts a technical masterclass of the darkroom, but beyond that it was just a picture of a lifeboat that lacked any real substance in my eyes.

I'd largely agree, but Sirch's point about those who do things the difficult way being treated as though what they were doing was of more creative value than someone rocking up with a DSLR and then applying a pile of effects to acheive an extremely similar image, mayn also be valid. Like when someone creates an image in oils - there's seldom a question about whether it's art (though it may be considered bad art) because of the process they went through to make it.