| Author | Thread |
|
|
06/13/2014 03:06:44 PM · #26 |
Intentionally ugly and "painful" challenge entry:
 |
|
|
|
06/13/2014 06:42:09 PM · #27 |
Originally posted by BrennanOB:
The problem with defining the ugly as the opposite of the beautiful, is that they are both moving targets. In music, art or fashion the search for the new is constant, and that results in the ugly of the decade before being embraced as fresh and honest and new. Be it Warhol, the Sex Pistols, or The "ugly" look of the 2007 catwalk season (really! look it up) we embrace the ugly, the un-polished the banal, what ever will get a rise from an audience. The only thing we fight against is the dull. In art we co opt the ugly, and add it to the batter as a spice. The only constantly ugly thing is the boring, the mundane, the thing we see so much of that we never want to look at it again. But if that object of our scorn was to become a rare thing, then it would begin to loop back into the land of perceived beauty. |
Eloquently put. Ugly or beautiful in the outward visage of people is indeed malleable. Perhaps though, beautiful is not relative, the truly beautiful. |
|
|
|
06/26/2014 06:40:00 AM · #28 |
Thank you very much for your comments. I am not an artist, and although I appreciate art, I am often puzzled by the very subtlety of what we call beauty. My gut feeling is that part of our aesthetic preferences are hard-wired in our brains, and part are acquired through our life experiences. The first part (hard-wired), I believe has to do with our evolution as a species and our first experiences as babies, when our brains were shaped by what we experienced. The second part (acquired) is too individual and subjective and complex at the moment to be understood properly. There are simply too many factors to consider.
However, we might have a chance of understanding the hard-wired part, and this is what interests me at the moment.
For this reason, I am collecting only pictures that are as free as possible of any man-made objects, animals, people, etc. In other words, I am trying to avoid images with "meaning" like that of cute little puppies or cute little babies or scary spiders and the like. These might appeal to the "subjective" or "cultural" or "personal" part of our aesthetic experience.
When I started I thought it would be easy to find the whole range of images that satisfy these criteria (from extremely beautiful to extremely ugly)... Interestingly, finding "extremely beautiful" images is very easy (you just have to look at the winners of some challenges here) while finding "extremely ugly" pictures without meaning has proven really difficult. Is it because "uglyness" is defined culturally only? That is a nice research question itself.
raish suggested I should look at the voting and select images with the lowest score... however that is misleading, because these images were sent with the aim of winning the contest... and in some cases they received a few votes! There was also a very good comment on the fact that technical quality might be a factor in the voting, which is not what I am looking for, since we all "learnt" to associate blurry, out-of-frame and out-of-focus with bad quality. In the real world there are no "out-of-frame" or shaky images.
Blindjustice commented on the fact that boring and mundane might fit my description best. This is something I would consider.
dtremain also pointed me to the "incomplete, the failure to reach fruition, the disfigured, the distorted from expected form" which is a fair description of bare earth. Thank you, this is also something to consider.
The pictures of textures and mushrooms are also stunning!
Thank you very much all of you! your comments have been excellent.
|
|
|
|
06/26/2014 11:20:07 AM · #29 |
I was going to enter this in the silhouette challenge but I kept looking at it and thinking the clouds were quite ugly looking - or maybe just overpowering - not sure. I desaturated this somewhat because they were even more reddish in the original shot. |
|
|
|
06/26/2014 02:16:48 PM · #30 |
| Alejandro, you have been here since 2011. I think your quest is dreadfully thought constipating. Maybe that is why you have submitted no photos? I do not mean this meanly. I just think it is time you started having some fun. |
|
|
|
06/26/2014 02:45:34 PM · #31 |
| We have to consider that, in order to avoid bias, the question he ostensibly asked is not the real one he's researching ;-) |
|
|
|
06/27/2014 12:43:16 PM · #32 |
It's a difficult path you've chosen because of perspective, taste, and interpretation. Most of what fascinates and appeals to me is what others would absolutely call ugly, yet for me, these images tell stories, hold history up to us, and are standouts in the nooks and crannies of an otherwise in-your-face world of glamorous facades.
     
Each one of these images thrilled me while I shot and processed them as they conjured up visions of forgotten times, people long gone, and things that just are not made the way they once were. Almost without exception, each of these images represents an eyesore to the people in close proximity to them.
|
|
|
|
06/27/2014 12:57:13 PM · #33 |
|
|
|
07/01/2014 09:47:54 AM · #34 |
Hi tnun,
I was originally interested in the voting mechanism that you have implemented here and just loved the pictures... A few months ago I started to get interested in aesthetics and run into a lot of questions. |
|
|
|
07/01/2014 09:49:01 AM · #35 |
|
|
|
07/01/2014 10:04:34 AM · #36 |
|
|
|
07/01/2014 10:13:56 AM · #37 |
|
|
|
07/01/2014 10:27:42 AM · #38 |
|
|
|
07/01/2014 01:15:59 PM · #39 |
|
Home -
Challenges -
Community -
League -
Photos -
Cameras -
Lenses -
Learn -
Help -
Terms of Use -
Privacy -
Top ^
DPChallenge, and website content and design, Copyright © 2001-2025 Challenging Technologies, LLC.
All digital photo copyrights belong to the photographers and may not be used without permission.
Current Server Time: 08/16/2025 10:34:51 PM EDT.
