With involvement in competitions of the National Association of Photographic Art, you hear a lot of judges comments, and the rules and criteria for artistic merit.

"Does a photo need to say something?"

Well, the photo should say something about the photographer or to put it better the photographer needs to "say something" by means of the photo, since art can be characterized as creative self-expression and communication in keeping with the elements of design.

Any photo should have a strong centre of interest which draws the other elements in the picture together and reveals the point of view and sometimes even something about the personality of the photographer.

An essential part of art is communication and if nothing is communicated to the viewer of a photo because of weaknesses in composition or technique then it is definitely NOT photographic art. That is generally speaking the condensed view of the National Association of Photographic Art and I certainly agree with it 100%.

Ronnoco