Have you ever thought about how we appreciate photography, about what we see when we look at a photo?
I started pondering this myself when I submitted with aspects, which from a technical point of view, are considered faults or flaws of technique.

Undoubtably, technique is incredibly important, but technique should always be second to the emotion and spirit of a picture.
As we develop our skills and learn more and more about the rules of exposure and composition, I think there's a danger that we can lose the ability to see photography emotionally and to respond with our spirit, noticing only the technical aspects instead.

Technique is the tool that we use to be able to capture the beautiful scenes we see before our eyes, it's the ability to capture the colours of the sky and keep the beautiful light that falls across the foreground, to arrange the chaos of nature into an ordered, elegant composition that conveys something of the spirit of being there to whoever sees the subsequent image.
But what happens when that magic, the very spirit of the scene requires that we break the rules we've previously learned in order to capture?

I feel that great photography requires an awareness that rules are merely teaching tools which offer guidelines about how best to go about capturing scenes. However, as nature is completely random and unlimited in it's ability to amaze us, we should also know that no rules of technique can ever hope to offer solutions that will always give us images that capture that amazement.
Sometimes, we have to forget the rules. We have to "wing it". We have to make it up as we go along.

For instance, one of the rules that we learn as landscape photographers is that the horizion is best placed on a third, that splitting the scene across the middle is a bit of a no no. Yet here is one of my favourite photographers on dA with two incredible pieces, and where is the horizon?
Right across the middle.



Do you think the centred horizon detracts from the image, or do you (like me) think that it actually completes the image? Putting the horizon on a third here would have changed the feeling of both images, and I don't think they would have been quite so stunning as they are now.

Speaking of thirds, that's another compositional rule.
The rule of thirds states that we should always try to put the focus of an image on a third, and not in the centre, as the eye finds it more pleasing that way.
Again, a couple of examples from dA's best photographers of where breaking that rule was absolutely the right thing to do



Do you think the centered positioning of the features detracts from these images, or do you think that it actually completes them?
In my opinion, these images wouldn't have worked as well if the artists had followed the rule of thirds.

Moving on to technical faults; things that we should never do. For example, lens flare is wrong and will always ruin an image. Right?



This would be a great image without the flare, but the flare really adds something to the picture, makes a surreal image feel almost real. It is the "fault"of the lens flare that elevates it to one of the best IR images I've ever seen.

Another thing that we need to be careful with is over-polarized shots, particularly on ultra-wide angle images where the polarizer can't cover the whole area of the image, creating an ugly dark blue stripe across the sky.
One of my all-time favourite photographers here on dA actually uses this effect creatively to give his images and amazing look



Sure it would be a wonderful image if the sky were even, but Bryan's images are always extra-special in the feeling they convey. They are so far beyond stale record shots, and I always want to step right into them. Part of that is because of his beautlful skies. I love the effect of the polarizer in this shot, although someone who only looks at the technical merits of a photo before the emotional might not feel the way I do.

Finally, we all know that we absolutely must avoid blowing highlights in shots. The resulting bright-white loss of detail can only have a negative effect on an image. But have a look at this piece.



Do the blown highlights ruin this image? Or do they add to it, give it the spirit, the emotion, the magic that the artist was trying to put into his photography? Personally I think that bright light on the left completes the shot, it gives the image a lot of it's power and adds a huge amount of the emotional impact of the photo.

Here's an example of my own, one of the earlier shots from my gallery.



Burned highlights right in the middle, almost as though this were taken on film that actually burned through in the exposure. I have a version of this with a faster exposure where the burned out sun is a lot smaller, but for me the image just didn't work without that bright sun burning down the street. That was what I wanted to capture, and capturing it involved burning out the highlights. I believe it was necessary to break the rules to get the emotion of the picture right, even if it meant that the technical aspects of the picture were wrong.

Which brings me back to where I started this journal, with a submission I made last week with blown highlights.
The reason I go out with my camera, the reason I get up at dawn isn't to create robotic record shots.
I'm constantly moved by the beauty of nature, and my aim when I point my camera at something is to capture that feeling of awe and wonder. Technique is wonderful in that it enables us to get as close as we can to getting what we see before us onto a camera sensor. But sometimes what we're FEELING when we take the shot simply can't be translated by following those rules.
We might take an incredibly accomplished record shot, but sometimes that's not enough to communicate the joy and amazement we're feeling.

On this particular morning I took a number of shots of a wonderful sunrise, working hard on the exposure, using technique to balance the brightness levels, and I was happy with a number of shots, but none of them made my soul sing, or made me feel "I've got it!" when I looked at the camera's LCD.

When the sun broke the horizon, everything I learned told me that I could no longer shoot into the light as the highlights would be completely blown. There was no way I could balance 13+ stops of exposure across the image, even using 6 stops of ND graduated filter on the sky.

But still I took one last exposure before turning my camera away from the light, and guess what? It was that shot, with blown highlights, with an imperfect histogram, with it's technical flaws, that made me smile when I saw it on the LCD, that made me know that I would go home happy, that made me thing "Yes! That's it!"

That flawed image was the one that, for me, captured the majesty of the sun rising on a new day, the cleansing feeling of being alone on a beach and being bathed by that beautiful first light, the wonder at the power and breath-taking beauty of nature...but of course, the highlights are blown.

Below is the image, alongside one I took earlier with a much better technically balanced sky (although I admit highlights reflected on the water are blown out).



Now you may prefer a different one from me, or you may not like either of them very much, but in here, and in the other shots I've featured above can be seen the reasons why I take photographs, and the things I always look for in the photography of others.

When I look at a photograph (in the same way that when I look at a painting) I don't look for the artists technique, I don't look at how it could have been improved or what the flaws are.
I look only to see how that image makes me feel, what emotions that picture inspires in me. It might be that on a deeper inspection I can admire the technique that went into it's creation, but the first thing is always emotion.
Always.

Sometimes, that emotive response may be achieved not through the artist's ability to follow the rules of photography, but in their ability to know when and how to break those rules.

Of course if you are interested in becoming a stock photographer, in creating postcards and poster shots, then you are obliged to follow and not break those rules in order to sell your work through agencies.
But for me (and for many of us I suspect) photography is a joy, a hobby, a pleasure, a means of expression, and thus we have complete creative freedom to make the images that give us pleasure.
Following the rules all the time will give us some fantastically accomplished shots, but knowing that sometimes we have to break them may just help us create something even better.

So ask yourself, when you look at a photo, what's the first thing you see? The artists technique (either successful or unsuccessful) or is your response more emotional?
Is your aim with photography to make clever, perfectly exposed and composed shots every time, or do you seek to capture something deeper?

Photography is a deeply personal and individual journey, and this is just one of the many choices we make.
Is photography an art with complete freedom of expression? Or is it a science where images are created by following the rules?

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I first wrote this article for my journal last week, and I'm submitting it as news now after various requests to do so.
I'd like to thank `foureyes `gilad *angelreich *MichelRajkovic ~handsinpantsdance *hotburrito2 and =Inebriantia for their permission to use their work in this article.