There is a question - might be a naive one - that has been bothering me for some time now: What is quality in photography? Or putting it this way: Why is a photo good and an other bad? This is partly the reason why I enrolled into the portrait photography class I was writing about. I saw many great pictures everywhere and I was not able to make such photos. What’s even worse, I was not able to tell why a photo pleased my eyes and why I found others ugly.

So, where does quality come from?

When thinking about it one of my favorite books comes to my mind: Zen and The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. The main character of the novel is searching for the definition of quality until going insane and eventually leaving the term undefined. But during his search he identified two views of the world: the classic and the romantic one.
The classic view is dealing with the technical details, the inner workings of things and beauty of engineering achievements, while the romantic one is seeing things of the world as they appear as a whole with their shapes and forms. None of the views are said better or worse; and quality supposed to lie where the two views meet.

The classic view in photography seems to be the easy way to go. This is what you can read a lot about and discuss at great length on the Internet: correct exposure, sharp photos, high resolution, image sensors, lenses, camera bodies, lighting gear, tripods, chromatic aberration, etc. I wrote that it’s easy because you buy or rent the gear you need or can afford, learn how use it and can create crisp clear photographs.

The romantic view in the context of taking or making photographs is something less tangible and more difficult to absorb for a technical mind like mine. The rule of thirds and golden ratio are easy to understand, however the composition, overall emotional impact of, or a story told by a picture are somewhat too airy to grab or explain. Geometric shapes and angles that I learned about on the portraiture classes are understandable concepts and with practice - I’m sure - they will be there in my pictures, but will be there quality?

Googling for quality photography I found for example this sentence on a photographer’s site: “We create quality photos that demand attention and leave lasting impressions.” Would it be that? Demanding attention and leaving lasting impressions?

Or is quality pragmatically related to whether the picture can be sold like you can read it on Photopreneur in this article? It concludes with this: “… nothing tells you a picture has failed more than no one willing to buy it — and nothing screams success louder than a crowd of people waving fistfuls of cash.“