An experimental suggestion...

I think someone brought this up after the last contest. As an experiment, should we eliminate titles for a month?

I often see comments in the contest threads about choosing one picture because of its "sentimental" value, and I wonder how often the title affects the "sentiment" the poster is attaching to the picture.

For example, I have a photograph on Yessy that I called "Gorilla Grandmother." I called it that as a descriptor, a way to tell it apart from my pictures of the younger gorillas. That picture gets clicked on more often than the other gorilla pictures, each of which is just called "Gorilla." It's not a better photo---in fact, I think it's not as good as several of the others. Yet it's consistently clicked on more often than the others.

Photographers look at titles in different ways. I generally use a descriptive term for my photographs ("Wolf," "Mt. Rainier," "Antinous") so I don't put much emphasis on them. A friend of mine, however (http://www.christographer.com), considers his titles intrinsic to his work, and feels like the viewer can only understand the symbolism in his photographs if they know the title. In fact, he usually designs a photograph with the title in mind.

I would be interested to see how viewers would comment on and rate the photos without titles.

What does everyone think? :shrug:

I'm big on titles so I'm a bit biased. But.... I understand what you are suggesting. Ideally a photograph should be judged as a respresentation of a particular theme and nothing else.

However, I do see that sometimes a title is needed for a photo when a story is being told. Sometimes not. Sometimes the story doesn't need a title.

While there a few standard "rules" for the contests IMO the rest is open to whatever the person hosting wants to do or try. This place is constantly evolving....changing... which is good. I like it when people try new things. These contests don't have "prizes" or "awards" so the important thing is just to get MORE people to participate....IMHO.

Sooooo.. I say give your suggestion a try. Perhaps lobby a current or future host.... or maybe a current or future host will take it upon themself to try this.

Keep in mind.....there are other "issues" that have been brought up in the past. One is the "lounge liz buddy" thing. People vote for a photo only based on the fact that they are "lounge liz" friends with that person.

I'd like to see ALL the photos voted on at the same time and to have "grades" assigned to each photo instead of just ONE VOTE but that's impossible with the way things work here. There was one photo from last month (I aint sayin which) that I was disappointed not to see in the finals. It should have been but wasn't. But... the "first round" thing is what it is. I just see photos get screwed once in awhile just because of the first round group they happen to be in.

Oops... too much coffee. I'm done.

critique out of the lounge. :)

I think subject matter is probably the biggest factor in swaying votes (especially where kids and puppies are concerned ;)) and I don't know what we could do about that, short of having everyone take pictures of the same thing. (I wouldn't mind doing this once---it might be interesting---, but I don't think I want to have my subject dictated to me all the time)

I think the title ties into the subject-matter bias. For example, if I put a picture of a child smiling in the contest, it would be cute and probably pretty popular. If I wrote in the title that this was my child who was being very brave during his cancer treatments, I could guarantee you that the number of people voting for it would increase significantly. Voters would say that it "tugged on their heartstrings" or "made them cry." But without the caption, it's just a picture of a smiling child---would it have made them cry?

My argument is that a photographer should try to tell the whole story without a caption. A truly great photo would tell the whole story of the child as a brave cancer patient. It should show him smiling in a hospital gown or with his medications or talking to a doctor or wearing a hat to cover up his head where he'd lost his hair to chemotherapy---anything to imply that he's a very sick, but happy boy. A caption (or title) can be a "crutch" for the photographer and the viewer.

That's why I think it would be fun to get rid of the titles one of these months. It would be really cool to see what kinds of stories people can tell without any sort of caption, and it will be great to see what sort of comments the lounge has to offer when they're not given any titles to lean on.

(Trust me, people think bizarre things when they see uncaptioned pictures. It's like a Rorschach test. I had a woman ask me once if this gorilla had AIDS:



I think it had to do with the discoloration on the backs of her arms. I managed to look like this was a quite reasonable suggestion and answered, "I don't know" with an implied "You could be right." What I didn't tell her is that this gorilla is a little girl that was born in a zoo and whose parents and grandparents were born in zoos).

In the contests we ask the public to vote for the best photograph, however there's no doubt a photograph with a clever title will probably get more votes than a similar photo with a generic title. Is that fair? I say yes, and a photo in the current contest is a perfect axample why it would be a shame to strip the titles.

Take a look at "She Stands Out in a Crowd." Without the title it is an intrigueing picture, but when you add the title it becomes a dynamite piece of art. The picture takes on meaning. The title defines what the artist was trying to portray.

so I'm neutral on this one.

titles that are emotionally manipulative.

"She Stands Out in a Crowd" is an example of a photo that lives up to its title. It's not a generic descriptor, but it does genuinely describe the picture without adding any outside elements.

In my above example (adding a title to a picture of a smiling boy that informs the audience that he has cancer) is, I would say, emotionally manipulative. I don't mean that the photographer is necessarily thinking in those terms. They know the child is sick, and, to them, it's an important part of the picture.

But it's different for the viewer, who doesn't know anything about this kid. There's nothing in the picture that lets the viewer know that he's sick---all they see is a happy child. Once I add the title, the viewer's reaction changes entirely. This is fine in many contexts---newspaper articles, hospital and charity websites, etc.---, but, in a contest, it's a bit unfair. A title like that gives the viewer an outside incentive to vote for the picture, a reason unrelated to the photograph itself.

If the picture clearly depicted a happy child with cancer---if all of this information was freely available in the photograph itself, then I would have no problem with the picture being called something that told us he was a brave cancer patient.

I'm not saying we should never have titles again. I just think it would be interesting to see the reaction to a contest/challenge in which the viewers had no commentary by the photographers on what they were trying to portray. If they succeeded, then the viewers should get it, regardless of a title.

...would be interesting. A theme like "Coke Bottle" where the angle, lighting, and background, etc. were up to the photographer but the only recognizable object allowed in the picture was a coke bottle, prohibiting titles would make the decision more objective. (In fact that would be a fun contest.)

:-)

In fact, I promise that, if I ever win the monthly contest, the following month's contest will have no titles.

Of course, since that is dependent on my ever winning the monthly contest, you'll probably be seeing titles for a long time to come...

:nopity:

I've got the perfect title - guaranteed winner

I'm definitely sitting out the next contest! :evilgrin:

"Barney" wouldn't be the same picture if you didn't know Barney was dead or on the way. Although you might guess.

I'd be up for leaving them out, though. Harder. ;)

...which is in no way a negative comment on the quality of your photo. However, were I to look at it as an untitled image, I'd have come away with a very different interpretation.

What I would first notice would be the woman on the left looking at the tools on the right. I would also see the greenery in the exterior background as being, not autumn, but spring. I'd read this as the woman about to go work in the garden for the first time since the arrival of spring, trying to decide which implement to use first.

What I would get from it was a sense of new beginnings, of the end of winter, of finally stepping outside into nature after being cooped up indoors for months. I would have seen Barney as, at most, a minor figure in the "story" -- just the family dog who was probably going to go out, lie in the grass, and watch the woman as she tended to her garden.