My personal view is that there is now image overload where there is in general little value given to photographs. These days, I go out with my family or friends for a day and they take hundreds of shots that they quickly browse through and say "look at that" or "isn't that awesome" - - - and afterwards the images are never revisited again as they sit on digital storage devices of some sort, lost in the mix of thousands and thousands of files continually appended to at every moment.
So digital capture allows an ease of taking and requires no consideration to cost, that has eroded one of the fundamentals of powerful image making - THE EDIT. I'm not talking post-processing here, but the culling of images down to a small selection that does not overwhelm the viewer. I have always found this process quite easy to do and have had no issue discarding hundreds or images from a shoot that were very good, in order to provide the best images to tell the story - or even the one image that represents what I want said.
But even for me, it is getting increasingly difficult to restrain myself from taking endless images in the first place - and I am again having to take a hard look at restricting what I take and what I show (to clients or others), so that my images have more impact and value.
I really noticed this with a portrait client several weeks ago - where as a result of not being restricted by the hard costs of film, I took way too much variety that even with my stringent culling - supplied them with around 80 unique images. I noticed that the client was slow getting the order back and was really struggling making her choices. Her order was several thousand dollars - which was fine from a business standpoint - - - but it was totally made up of 5x7 prints and a few 8x10 prints of many of the shots. The daughter emailed and complained that she wanted them all and wondered if she could buy proofs of them all (which she couldn't). In reality, I would have preferred them purchasing fewer images that could be featured in their homes.
I also have realized "TOO MUCH" as being an issue with my travel images at
http://asifweknow.com. The fact is that I do edit down severely to get to the 1,000 or 2,000 images that I provide in the gallery each trip. But I have come to realize that people look through quickly and do not recognize the individual images and the strengths of them. When some who are loyal viewers of our site and kept up on my all of my pictures (even our children), saw our latest book about Cahuita with it's narrowed down selection featured as stories - they are going WOW and some responded that had no idea that I had such wonderful images - - - even though they surely would have seen them before.
So - my response to what makes "Good Photography" - may well be just what it is when submitting images for a magazine article or an exhibit in a gallery - - - Good
Editing,
Story Telling with relevant sets of images, and for a strong single image may be Title and/or Description for
Context.
The task of taking these things into consideration was never more evident to me than when I had to narrow down to 8 images for display at a small exhibit - from the already culled down 2,706 images that were my final selection, from around 12,000 that I took on that trip to Costa Rica :
You Tube Video - Setting Up Exhibit . Only eight images could be displayed - my final selection of 8 images were not necessarily all of the best ones from this trip, but told the story I wanted to tell and complimented each other, and the Labels on each one were a powerful way to draw people into the contents of the image I had taken.
Something I didn't really allude to that makes an image powerful - is the PRINT - - - a visual that few people experience any longer. I personally find it very difficult to determine the quality of an image or the real abilities or intent of a photographer, by viewing what they post on the web (websites, blogs, forums, etc.). This makes commenting (positively or negatively) or critiquing on web images, very difficult - and in most cases probably of little to no real value.
EDIT - after posting, I realize my thoughts may be slightly irrelevant to the original thread content and replies - - - but was triggered by comments farther down the page. Nevertheless, I do feel that it may be possible for images to stand out even with image overload - sometimes regardless of the content - if attention is given to the things I have mentioned.
Rob