For a start it implies you accepts the notion of "good".
There are people who disagrees there is even such a thing.
If so we cannot even begin to talk, let alone try to discuss/argue/reason/debate what is "good". (Why argue how long a unicorn's horn is when there are no unicorns? or imagine two blind men arguing about whether a thing is red or green, or a blind man giving you directions.)
In one sense "good" is a
measure, which then entail a "ruler", namely a thing against which you can compare/check the thing you want to measure, or in a loose sense, a "standard".
There will be many that say that "good" is relative, ie it is always a case of one man's meat, another's poison.
A measurement is relative, ie relative to your chosen ruler or standard. And some of these standards can be technical, aesthetic, "fit for purpose", or even "personal".
So in photos, technical can means focused - subject is focused, well detailed; exposure - no blown highlights, no deep shadows, everything within sensor's dynamic range; noise - the lowest possible in a situation with a given sensor; WB - correct colour temperature, etc etc. Most of the so-called critique you get here in Clubsnap are of these nature. But being technically correct or good - or flawed for that matter - may be entirely unrelated, even irrelevant, to the content or the aesthetic merits, or lack thereof, of the photo. Technical and technics, just like tools, are means to an ends.
And aesthetic or beauty can be such an end. There are rules or criteria here too, eg rules of third/golden mean, symmetry, and other compositional rules, etc, developed long ago by the Greeks who fully appreciate beauty. But again many these days think that these are archaic, irrelevant or just plain wrong, and ought to be thrown away, and that aesthetic is something entirely personal and "unmeasurable". I will come to this later.
Then there is "fit for purpose". As a camera is not an ends in itself, so is its output: a photo too may not be an ends in itself. And so in this measure, a photo is good if it fulfills another intent, eg news, advertisement, propaganda, educational, science, art, etc etc. And for commercial or competition, what sells or wins prizes is certainly good.
And you also allude to taking a photo one time, ie one shot, and post imaging processing, etc. That is,really, another thing altogether, namely you trying to distinguish between a good photo and a good photographer. A good photographer makes good photos, but, very obviously, a good photo do not imply a good photographer: a good tree bears good fruit, but bad trees do good fruits too.
The art, the photo, may in the end justify whatever the photographer does, or does not. Not every photo needs to be one shot, but if you're into sports, or journalism, or wildlife, one shot may be all you have.
And finally on the personal standard, on the inexpressible, cannot-be-put-into-words measure by which you yourself know whether your photo is good or not.
The other "standards" are external, objective and expressible in an understandable language, so that all can see and understand what these are, and whether you have chosen a good standard and made a proper measure.
But when people say "good is relative", they usually do no mean relative to such external objective standards, but rather relative to their internal, unseen, even unknowable, personal and private sense of the "good", which being inexpressible cannot be argued against, and even cannot be wrong.
It may well be so, but it may not be too. And nobody will know what you are talking about. It tantamount to a thing is "good" just because its your choice. And there is no point then asking for critique and comments if you already know that your picture is "good", a "good" that you cannot share with anyone.
Rules can be broken - for rules are not everything - but it ought not to be broken just because you can break it. There are surely new things to be discovered, but unless you can say it, it remains hidden yet to the whole wide world.
). Edited or not, doesn't matter to me. Oh ya, and good photographer = can do this standard of photos consistently. Not the take 1000 photos and only 1 good photo come out type. Course is all my personal views only.
