Aesthetic Choices – a readers survey

I have often noticed that people will have a range of aesthetic values that they apply when judging the quality of their images.  If an image is lacking in one quality, say sharpness, often it may still be acceptable if it is strong in other qualities, like colour saturation or a sense of movement. This summing up of an image is an intuitive process and can be understood as the impact of an image.  Of course there is a wide range of individual tastes. However it surprising how a large group of people will often choose the same images, albeit for different reasons.

With this in mind I am interested to discover what aesthetic values guide our choices.  It is quite obvious that there is considerable discussion after our competitions and dissent from the choices of the judges. Sometimes this is merely the frustration of not achieving the scores that we feel reflects the merit of our own works. Some of it could be a schism between the values of the members and the judges. Whatever the case, it would be nice to understand what aspects of our photos we rate most highly.

I am interested to do a survey of the club members – which has also been published in Camera Clips for September. However, for those of you with an online mentality, you can also do it here.

I have listed 10 different criteria or values that can be applied to a photograph.  All I ask is that you number the list from 1 to 10 in order of how important you consider each of the criteria. Also I would like you to add one criteria to the list.

Click this link to start the survey…..(you have until midnight on 31-Oct-2011 to complete it)

I hope to publish the results in future editions of Camera clips, so that you can see how your choice compare with that of your peers.

James Allan