On Looking Good (or Why we Like Sunsets)
A visit recently to London’s annual Frieze Art Fair reminded me not only of the huge gulf between photography-as-art and photography-as-reporting, but also between attitudes towards beauty. Probably most photographers see it as part of their job to reveal, enhance or even manufacture attractiveness in their images. If you work commercially (and that includes fashion, portraiture, weddings as well as product photography), the degree to which you can create a beautiful image out of a subject that is not necessarily so, will usually determine how successful you are.
Yet for photojournalists, beauty may have a very low priority, and for those shooting subjects that are serious issues, such as conflict, poverty and disaster, beauty is likely to be actively unwanted. And in photography conceived as art, the question is still more complex. Until the early twentieth century, the pursuit of beauty was central to art, and even subjects which were inherently repugnant, such as martyrdom and crucifixion, were generally treated in a refined and appealing way. Usually, art set out to satisfy our love of beauty. As the art historian Ernst Gombrich wrote, “Most people like to see in pictures what they would also like to see in reality. This is quite a natural preference. We all like beauty in nature.”
Yes we do, and understanding why is crucial for anyone who sets out to create it or reveal it. And people like beauty in things everything. Canvas opinion, and we find that people like sunsets because they find them beautiful. No surprise there, then. Sunsets are one particularly universal example of a sight that is generally agreed to embody beauty. Angelina Jolie is another (and Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner if you want to retrace movie history). So is a full moon hanging low in the sky. And a swan coming in to land. And maybe Edward Weston’s Pepper, 1930. And a rose. What ties all these together is our general agreement about what is beautiful, and has been debated since at least Plato. And the cliché ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ doesn’t work at all. Beauty needs a consensus, or at least the possibility. If we’re shooting to make a beautiful, or at least good-looking image, there’s an inevitable sense in the back of the mind that other people should also like the result. If they don’t, then the photographer was just not skillful enough, or showed it to the wrong audience.
So, if you want to shoot things that look good, or make things look good in an image, what are the boxes to tick? I did some research and found that the information — at least the practical information — is scattered around. You can find out how to light a face for beauty, how to apply make-up, the ‘perfect’ viewpoint for well-known landscapes, and so on. All detailed specifics. But the whole list is longer than that. Gathered from different sources, here it is. Or rather, my version of it….
… and the less-than-inspiring conclusion is that the beautiful is less about surprise than about familiarity.
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Bright and colourful
Sad, you may think, but true. Several research studies in perceptual psychology confirm what the imaging industry has followed instinctively for years — that most people prefer rich colours to drab, bright images to dark, and higher contrast rather than flat. This is why in the days of film Fuji’s Velvia overturned Kodachrome’s lead.
Satisfying proportions
Certain proportions — of the subject, the frame, the composition — are known from experience to be generally satisfying to most people. They include the golden section, for example, and for a fascinating study on ideal facial proportions, look at this site: beautyanalysis.com.
Harmony
Relationships in colour, tone and texture that balance each other in most people’s perception. As with proportions, these have a solid grounding in perceptual psychology, for instance, complementary colours.
Unity
Framing, lighting and compositional devices that tie the scene together. Traditional composition is, after all, about creating order out of chaos. One example among many would be a curve or combination of eye-lines that draw the viewer’s eye inwards.
Fitness and economy
The maxim ‘less is more’ may be over-used, but more often than not it works. Fussy and over-decorated scenes, subjects and images tend to be judged less attractive.
Correctness
Fits most people’s ideas of how things ought to be and ought to look. In other words, fit for purpose. An especially modern concern is natural correctness in landscapes, with no pollution and despoilment – this also prompts the reverse approach, the school of campaigning landscape photography championed by Robert Adams which shows despoilment.
Ideal and unblemished
If the subject isn’t perfect, at least enhance the best and suppress the worst. This means being able to analyse any subject in terms of its beauty potential, whether a landscape, an object or a face. So, no abandoned car in that field over there, and no pimple on the model’s complexion. No wonder that the temptation to retouch photographs proves too hard for some photographers and publishers to resist, whether it was National Geographic digitally shifting the Pyramids on its February 1982 cover, or the now universal post-production smoothing of skin complexion in cosmetics ads and high-end fashion magazines.
Pleasurable memory
Conveying beauty means relating to the viewer’s experience, especially with beauty in nature. The more the viewer has a sense of being there and being involved, the more effective. We generally prefer sunshine to the lack of it, we like warm and clear weather, and beaches of pure white sand, at least when we are on holiday. Landscape images that play to these memories generally score high on the looks-good scale.
Sensual and tactile lighting
In situations where the lighting can be controlled or created, certain techniques are known from experience to deliver beautifying results on particular subjects. One example is enveloping light that softens shadow edges and displays a roundness of form; in a studio, this is a predictable beauty workhorse, whether for an automobile, figure, face or still-life. Equally, a broad gloss on shiny or wet objects tends to make them attractive and/or desirable.
Note that, at the end of all of this, beauty is about expectation, about fitting what most people have learned to like. This doesn’t make it sound very original, and indeed it isn’t. Beauty means not having too many surprises, and this applies to beauty in a human face as well as in nature. Making scenes, people, objects look as good as possible is a basic skill in much photography, particularly commercial. That is largely what clients pay for. In wedding and portrait photography it is even more definite; the bottom line is ‘Make me look as good as possible.’
But first, you have to be clear about whether or not beauty is what you’re aiming for. It shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion.
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An image that ticks many of the right boxes — rich colours that are more-or-less complementary, clarity, and sunset lighting, depicting a popular tourist destination considered attractive in is own right (Monument Valley in the US).
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A commercial image in the ‘wish-you-were-here’ canon, for a hotel brochure, with lighting, time of day and camera position all considered, and the setting groomed. The point-of-view position in front of the iced drink is deliberate.
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Another commercial shot promoting a hot-spring spa resort, employing lighting, atmosphere and a model with an attractive figure, in order to project prospective clients into the scene. Note that deliberately not showing the model’s face helps viewers to imagine themselves in the spa.
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A landscape that, although highly managed (farmland in he Yorkshire Dales) is considered conventionally ‘correct’ because ‘unspoiled’. Also, for good measure, framed and composed so that the viewers can imagine themselves within the scene (subjective wide-angle rather than distancing telephoto), and lighting in the classical romantic tradition.
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The opposite of a beautiful landscape: large-scale open-cast mining, a generally demonised activity these days, whether or not its economic importance is considered.
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One common route to attractiveness in food is to concentrate on sensual qualities such as colour and texture at the expense of infinite detail. Hence, a low camera position, shallow depth of field, and glowing light illumination that highlights moist surfaces.
