While I do a bit of astro-photography myself, and appreciate the technical craft it entails, it's not really art. It's craft. The intent is to merely record - to capture. There is no creativity going on here at all. Sure, you process the images, and can change the colours, but why is that creative? Don't get me wrong, the whole idea of capturing photons that have travelled through space for millions of years unimpeded until they hit my telescope mirror is mind bending... but it's a scientific process. There's no creativity going on, no matter how much you process the imagery. It can be fantastic decorative art, but decorative art doesn't require creativity - it just requires craft skill. Astro photography has been used in art however. Mishka Henner produced a book called
"Astronomical". What makes this art, is not the imagery within, but the concept that makes people think. You can't just SHOW an image and go "ta dahh!" and call it art, no matter how beautiful it is, you have to think about the work and how you get the concept across, and often, being "nice" has got sod all to do with it.
Why is it important that it's art to you?
You can't just decide what a word means Peter. I can't just decide what is art and what isn't any more than you can decide what is a dog or not. There's decorative art, which is basically craft skills to make pretty things, and there's contemporary art practice - work that elucidates, enlightens, speaks of something, or challenges beliefs or perceptions. Art is concept driven and has purpose beyond merely creating an image, or a sculpture (or anything else) for the sake of it alone.
What is subjective is whether you LIKE it, of course, but as many of us always point out in these threads, whether you LIKE it is not a measure of how GOOD it is and LIKING something does not make it art (no matter how much you want it to be). This is the difference between decorative art and conceptual art. Decorative art HAS to be look good, and HAS to be LIKED because its only purpose is to hang on a wall as decoration. Keith Arnatt's images of dog turds are indisputably art, but no one would ever hang them on the wall. Why are they art? Because he's taken the idea, developed it, and produced work that does exactly what he set out to do, which is to show the complexity and beauty in dog sh*t... and to outrage people to some extent, and he's probably pleased to see that it works on that level too.
Basically, if someone asks you what the work is about, and you have no answer, then it's not art as most people in here are discussing it. If there's no concept, then it can't be contemporary art as we understand it now. It may well be decorative artwork however, but that's a different stripe of cat/dog
Your statement that because work may be influenced by other things is meaningless too. That's always happened, and always will. The first image of a person was made on a piece of ivory around 26,000 years ago (that we know of), so by this argument no portrait created since then can be art, because it's no longer original. Clearly a silly standpoint, as original and creative portraits are taken all the time. That first ever likeness of a human being wasn't art... only when someone sat there and thought... Hmmm.... I'm going to make this picture of a woman have the head of a deer, because then it's a representation of nature, and the bountifulness of the world that provides for me... I can do this because it's the women that appear to "give" life."... That's when it became art, when it started to use crude symbolism to represent an IDEA. Usually it was theological, but it was an abstract, conceptual thought... it then started to become critical in nature.
I don't understand why some people (and it does mainly seem to be photographers) always want to redefine the rules to suit them, despite having no great interest, or knowledge about art. All of a sudden, art is "subjective" and "anything can be art if you want it to be". Many decry art as a load of b******s, but then seek to redefine their own work as art... on their terms. This is particularly annoying when the person saying these things (not any particular person in here) has previously had no great interest in art, never read about the subject, has no knowledge, never goes to galleries, can't name more than a handful of artists, and has no clear idea of what defines art.. suddenly comes out with "Art is what you want it to be"... "It's subjective".... "one man's art is another man's blah blah..." "Marmite"....
No... it's not. No matter how much you want it to be true... it's not. At points in history it was, sure. There's tons of stuff in the V&A that is heralded as seminal work of its time, but if created today, would be utterly ignored and dismissed as sentimental, decorative crap, and that's the point.
People with this attitude are just ignorant. I mean ignorant literally, not as an insult. What they really mean is they LIKE it, so it must be art, but however, they are mistakenly thinking LIKING it is a measure of it's worthiness as art. I'm ignorant of many things, but I have the wisdom to keep my mouth shut about them so I don't look like a complete knob, and I certainly wouldn't dream of wading into a debating society or meeting about a subject I have little knowledge of and start saying that "I'm as right as you are.. it's all subjective" when I talk my load of ill informed b******s, because I'd just be disregarded as uninformed and ignorant. If you want to take that stance that flies totally in the teeth of established wisdom, then you need to take a leaf from the book of the scientific principle and prove it. Write a paper, essay or a manifesto... produce worth that challenges the status quo... because THAT'S what artists do. Just sitting their saying "I know what I like" makes you irrelevant. If you genuinely feel you're right, then do something about it. Making a nice pastoral landscape and just calling it art isn't enough. Tell me WHY it is without banging on about craft skills.
People seek to give worth to their work by wanting it to be art because they somehow feel that's necessary, but when it's disregarded as art by the art world, they feel hurt, and then lash out at the art world as being pretentious and elitist, and just go into a huge, childish sulk and start slagging off anything that actually is art, and become evangelical about it, taking every opportunity to belittle art they can... yet somehow, deep down, they try to redefine art on their terms because they still want people to respect their work as art... as if that's the ONLY measure of whether an image has worth or not.
Here's an idea... why not just be happy with what you produce and stop trying to measure your pastoral landscapes, wildlife shots, social portraiture, lightpainting etc etc... against contemporary art and making it confrontational. Why not instead just say "no.. it's not contemporary art... it's just a ****ing nice photograph" and market it as such (many in here do, and do this well). None of these stupid arguments would ever actually happen if people just were honest about what they do. The vast majority of work I see in here is not art. So? A lot of it is still bloody great imagery, so why get upset if it's disregarded as art? Stop measuring it as art then. I get just as frustrated when I post something in here and it gets measured against the camera club ideal. Why do people do that? Clearly it's not intended for that audience, so why point out that it's not using the rule of thirds, or that "it needs a crop" or some b******s like that?
Learn to accept the differences between decorative art and conceptual, contemporary art - know where your work sits, and stop trying to force a square peg into a round hole. Ultimately, you'll be happier. Try to show your decorative art as conceptual art and it will not be well received as such (and vice versa), so stop it
It's for THIS reason I think it's a great idea to have more of the forums for project based, or conceptual work. Not to be elitist, but to just put stuff where it belongs. Now we have ONE such forum. a certain member who is a regular detractor of all things art not long ago tried to rally the troops and get people to post ordinary decorative stuff in there though in some sort of anti-elitist protest. I don't get it... When people post conceptual work in the normal forums, it gets trashed, and when we get our own forum, people want to trash it too. Why the antagonism? It's like stupid religious people arguing over who's imaginary friend if best... stop it.
There's nothing wrong with work that's not contemporary art. Decorative art is equally as important. In fact, there's more of a sustainable market for it actually. Most artists are actually quite poor. They do it for the love of doing it, not to be rich. I know loads of artists, and together, we don't have a pot to p**s in!! I know strictly commercial photographers who earn 5 times as much as I do. I spent over 20 years earning more than I do now with purely commercial photography! The irony is, even THEY still get uppity when you suggest that their work is purely decorative... despite the fact that you actually love it (the very quality decorative art requires) and they are more successful (commercially) than you are. Utterly, utterly baffling. They want it to be regarded well by other artists, but are not prepared to produce work that could even begin to be considered as contemporary art. That's like being a great long jumper, but insisting that your gold medal be for 100 metres. You'd be laughed at for such a suggestion, and this is no different.
People are mental.