Johnston's Constant

Johnston's Constant, immodestly named but what the hey: The near-Universal desire for a Universal standard of taste, which nevertheless doesn't exist.

Johnston's Constant has two corollaries:

Corollary no. 1: The "You like that?!?" corollary. Amazement over the fact that other people lack one's own good taste.

Corollary no. 2: The "What can I do to make you love me?" corollary. The wistful desire for some ironclad and indisputable method of pandering to everyone at once. A fond but futile hope. The fact is, no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, some people are going to like it, some people are going to hate it, and some people are going to be indifferent. C'est la vie.

__________________

Mike

Comments

[Robin P]

Thank you Mike, number 1 explains my hastily written tirade against the Tom Kaszuba photo and number 2 helps to explain why it was "moderated" out.

Cheers, Robin

[Tom Kaszuba]

A friend of mine that I met in a digital imaging forum once said something about photography that I will never forget. Your comments today echo his sentiments.

It goes as follows....and I quote.

"This is what I go by whether it's my stuff, your stuff, or their stuff:

Do I like it?

It sounds so simple, but really it isn't. When you submit a photo to a magazine, or try to sell it at a gallery, no one cares how you did it. No one cares that you had to crawl around in the swamp neck-deep in alligators for five hours to get that one shot. No one cares what camera you used. Your personal life is meaningless to them--until you are dead, of course--after which (if you were any good at all) the price goes up in a direct relationship with how interesting you were.

All they know is whether they like it."

[Max]

The herd instinct.

[guy couture]

Hi Mike
as a french canadian, I always like when french words appear here and there on english sites and in litterature. You just end Johnson's constant by "c'est la"
sorry Mike but it makes no sense. Imagine I write "it's the" well it's the what?
what's missing,is "vie". I guess you meant "that's life", the fact that some like it and others hate it.
with "vie", you'll start making French appealing to Americans. Wow.
And as everybody on earth agrees, your site is a marvel, and as one recently wrote ,could be named the thoughtful photographer. Your article on your intention to be a pj was so well written, and all comments were of fine reflections.
I was also glad when you asked writers not to confuse loose and lose. Imagine how non english speaking people can start doing the mistake after seeing it on the net day after day.
Well Mike je vous souhaite tout le bonheur possible
guy

[Barb Smith]

This is a huge issue in a number of camera clubs where I held membership. Points are given for how hard it was to get the image and if it matched current tastes in the group. BTW, I loved Tom's technique. Very different take and looks more like a painting. Its probably a dramatic print. I also like his site.

[Malcolm]

De gustibus non est disputandum has always been my motto. So, try to see it my way, eh?

[Nigel]

I think variety in taste is a good thing. Enforced taste is totalitarian kitsch.

Cheers,

N

[Julie Heyward]

Is this posting about photography, or is it about parenting a teenage boy? Or could it be a narrative between a dog owner (1) and dog (2)?

-Julie

[Michael Seltzer]

A neat paraphrase of Kant. Corollary no. 1 is practically a quote (except Kant used umlauts).

[Helcio Tagliolatto]

Guy,
although English has dominated near all the global communication, French still has the "Spirit of Finesse" in conversation, and Mike always uses it the correct way.
Helcio

[John Camp]

I knew a newspaper art critic who claimed that he never looked at pornography, not because it didn't turn him on, but because it was always done with such poor taste that it was aesthetically painful to watch.

JC

[Janet Cowlan aka Janet Miller]

i would like to submit my work for your critique... it doesn't matter how many hours you stood there, and or what camera you used to get the shot.. It is what you SEE that creates the image...
let's bring this out here for discussion, if two people standing in the same place are looking at the same thing and photographing it with the same camera, will it come out the same way? Please don't compare photo images to paintings... they are simply photographs... and stand on their own...