motion blur and creative photography

During one of my recent video assignments, I broke out my camera during some free moments and shot some creative photos for one of my clients. Later on after the day's work was done, he asks me "got any good shots?" I showed him some of the shots I took, including a few that I took on rear shutter sync to create a motion blur effect. His response? "Those look pretty weird to me." I was floored. I took something mundane, boring, and repetitive and made it into a shot where you could see what my subject was doing from start to finish in one shot. To him in just looked like I turned the guy into the flash or a ghost or something.

I'm wondering if I missed some kind of hard and fast rule of creative photography. Maybe I'm worried too much about the opinion of one guy. Maybe I should be worried about his opinion because it represents the average person's viewpoint.

At what point does creative photography make the average viewer go from "wow, what a really cool shot" to "this is weird"?

What do you think?

First of all, welcome to the Forum. I think this is a very interesting topic, and one more fitting for the Photography as Art forum. Perhaps one of the mods could move it there?

My first thought on this is that it falls along the "what is art" line. There is no write or wrong answer for everyone. There are lots of things out there that people call art that don't do anything for me, and other things that I feel are great pieces of art. Those same things may mean just the opposite to someone else. Perhaps this person felt they were "weird" because they had never seen a photo that looked like that before. Perhaps they were expecting nice, sharp image that froze the moment in time. It's really hard to say one way or the other.

Who are you taking the photos for? You? The other guy? If you were shooting for fun, and you're happy with the way the photos turned out, then great. Mission accomplished.

Welcome to PR :)

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Originally Posted by camdude

...I'm wondering if I missed some kind of hard and fast rule of creative photography...

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Only thing I can say as far as art photography, where you are not shooting for a client, is to create whats works for you and not worry about what others may think. There will always be some who like what you are doing and others who don't. Do what you love, hold your head high, and take pride in your work.

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Originally Posted by mjs1973

...I think this is a very interesting topic, and one more fitting for the Photography as Art forum...

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I agree, consider it done :)

I think that the one guy likes to cling to what is mundane, boring, and repetitive because it is safe. Don't worry that he thought it was weird - be happy that it's different and creative. And keep doing it! The average person's viewpoint is generally the lowest common denominator. Be unique - those are the kind of people who are noticed. Who notices the people who do what everyone else does? :)

I agree with everyone else here. Push the limits and see what you can come up with that is interesting and DIFFERENT as you have this luxury when shooting for yourself. I've talked with a few pro portrait photographers that all have the same complaint: every time they try to do something artistic or outside the accepted norm, it never goes over as well as the "face front, plain vanilla" type shots. This is what the customers usually expect, and anything that excedes their preconceived notions is "weird".

Take it as a compliment :thumbsup:

Brand spankin' new to the forum. This is my first post, and I would like to use it to say this, WEIRD ROCKS !!!
You must be yourself, if for no other reason than no one else can be yourself. Remember if you are here now, you are supposed to be here now.
I for one love boring, I love exciting, I love rainy, I love sunny. One must remain open and fluid in order to best communicate one's point through any form of artwork.

I've always thought "wierd" was a compliment.
Let us see an example of what you did!