Every photographer who submits work to NOICE Magazine is asked the same question before anything else: what makes a good photograph? It sounds simple. It isn’t.
The team at NOICE recently gathered 83 answers to that question, from photographers on every continent, at every stage of their practice, working in every genre. Some replied with a single word. One ran to 487. The average sat around 50 words — a considered sentence or two. NOICE read every one of them and grouped the recurring ideas into seven themes.
What emerged is one of the most honest snapshots of how working photographers actually think about their craft — and barely a single answer mentions gear. For anyone planning to turn their work into a printed photobook, the seven themes read like a brief for how to shoot, edit and sequence your best work. Here’s what they said, and what it means for the book you’re going to make.
Each theme below comes straight from NOICE’s reading of the 83 responses — along with what it means once your photographs leave the screen and land on paper.
The single most common answer, by a significant margin. The word feel or feeling appears in roughly 40 of the 83 responses. Before light, before composition, before story, photographers reach for emotion first — and what’s striking is how consistently they reject technical perfection in favour of emotional truth. Multiple answers explicitly say it’s not about technical perfection, then go on to describe what it is about. The answer is almost always some version of feeling.
“A good photograph makes you stop. Not because it’s beautiful — because it’s true.”— One of 83 photographers answering NOICE Magazine
In your photobook: when you’re shortlisting images, trust the frames that still produce a flicker of the feeling you had when you took them. They’re the ones that make a stranger stop turning pages.
A good photograph doesn’t explain itself. It holds tension between what’s shown and what’s hidden, and leaves space for the viewer to become a co-author. NOICE noticed this theme often appears alongside feeling — mystery is the mechanism by which feeling is produced. Several answers use the word “space”; others describe the tension between the photographer’s intention and what the image became on its own.
“It doesn’t explain itself. It doesn’t need a caption to tell you how to feel.”— From the NOICE Magazine survey
In your photobook: resist the urge to caption everything. Generous margins, quiet pacing and the occasional empty page are the printed equivalent of the “space” these photographers describe.
Good photographs are found, not manufactured. The skill is in noticing, not in creating spectacle. The photographers who answered this way aren’t talking about finding extraordinary subjects — they’re talking about finding the extraordinary in ordinary ones. A basketball court. A stretch of sky. A shadow across a wall.
“A good photograph makes the world look fascinating — because it is.”— From the NOICE Magazine survey
In your photobook: everyday series bind beautifully. A tightly themed set of ordinary subjects — skies, shopfronts, commutes — often makes a stronger book than a greatest-hits collection.
A good photograph is honest. It doesn’t perform, it doesn’t chase trends, it doesn’t manufacture emotion. Two of the most striking answers in the whole survey were a single word long: sincerity, and magic. Several photographers connected honesty to time — an honest photograph will still feel true years later. One described a good photograph simply as “a decision made visible”.
In your photobook: honesty ages well, and print is permanent. If an image feels like it’s performing for an algorithm, it probably doesn’t belong in a book you want to be proud of in ten years.
A good photograph captures something that existed for a fraction of a second. The photographer must be present, ready, and willing to embrace chance. One answer used a metaphor NOICE admitted they rather enjoyed:
“The same traits that make a good hunter make a good photographer… I may come home empty-handed today, but tomorrow I’ll go out again and again, until I’ve found some sort of truth.”— From the NOICE Magazine survey
In your photobook: persistence is what fills a book. The near-misses and quieter frames you gather along the way become the connective tissue that gives your strongest images their rhythm.
A good photograph tells a story — it communicates an idea, a position, a truth about the world. But the sharpest observation in the entire survey, at least for anyone making a photobook, is this one: the story lives in the sequence, not the single image.
“What makes a photograph a good photograph is the one that follows it.”— From the NOICE Magazine survey
The edit, not the frame. That is, quite literally, what a photobook is: the one format where you decide what follows what, at what size, on which side of the spread, and how fast the reader moves.
A good photograph comes from genuine attention. The photographer must truly see, not just look. This theme overlaps with the everyday — attention is what transforms the ordinary into the photographic. Several answers use the word “instinct”: seeing isn’t purely intellectual, it’s felt.
“Anyone can buy a nice camera. Not everyone can see light, emotion, and story before they press the shutter.”— From the NOICE Magazine survey
In your photobook: attention shows in the object, too. Paper stock, binding, margins and image size are all ways of paying attention to your own work — and readers can feel the difference in their hands.
What photographers care about, when given the space to answer honestly, is feeling, mystery, honesty, attention, and the ordinary world. Not specs. Not rules. Not performance. NOICE distilled all 83 answers into a single sentence, and it’s worth pinning above your desk:
“A good photograph makes you feel something you can’t quite explain — by showing you something real that you might have missed.”— NOICE Magazine’s distillation of all 83 answers
Almost every theme in the survey is really about the relationship between an image and its viewer. A photobook is the one place you control that entire relationship — the order, the pacing, the scale, the paper it’s felt on.
Start with the edit. The survey’s most practical lesson — a photograph is made good by the one that follows it — means your job isn’t to pick your 60 best images; it’s to build sequences where each image improves its neighbours. If you’re new to that process, our step-by-step guide to making a photobook walks through layouts, sequencing, paper choices and file setup in plain English.
Then look at how other photographers have handled the same decisions. We’ve curated, analysed and dissected a series of recent projects to show you what can be achieved — explore our photography book printing insights for the full breakdowns, or start with four projects that put the survey’s themes into print:
More than fifty years of Liverpool street life — terraced streets, shopping centres, pubs and protests — pairing 1970s–80s archive frames with the same city in the 2020s. A4 landscape, 120 black-and-white pages on 170gsm gloss, perfect bound. See the project.
An unflinching document of the lives of the homeless in London and New York, its monochrome frames focusing purely on the subject. A 340 × 240mm case-bound hardback — section sewn, with a black Balacron cover, black gloss foiling and 88 pages on 170gsm Magno Volume. See the project.
India Mae Alby’s record of the SK8 M8S Collective, paced so full-bleed action spreads give way to quieter portraits and group shots follow details. A5, 198 black-and-white pages on 170gsm gloss, perfect bound. See the project.
The VE80 booklets — children waving flags, veterans lost in thought, streets alive with festivity — grounded, observational and never intrusive. A5 perfect bound, 40 black-and-white pages on 170gsm silk with a matt-laminated 300gsm cover. See the project.
And when the sequence is right, print with the same attention the survey keeps coming back to. Paper, ink and binding are how feeling survives off the screen — which is why we send free paper sample packs and check every file before anything goes to press.
Ready to turn your best photographs into a printed book?
Talk through paper, binding and sequencing with a real printer — and get a free file check before anything goes to press.
According to 83 photographers surveyed by NOICE Magazine, the most common answer is feeling — named in 48% of responses — followed by mystery, the everyday, honesty, the decisive moment, story and attention. Almost none of the answers mentioned equipment or technical perfection. The survey’s one-line distillation: a good photograph makes you feel something you can’t quite explain, by showing you something real that you might have missed.
No — the photographers in NOICE’s survey repeatedly rejected technical perfection as the measure of a good image. That said, print is less forgiving than a screen when it comes to resolution and file setup, so it’s worth reading our print resolution guide before you send a book to press. Emotional truth first; sensible files second.
Edit for feeling and honesty rather than technical merit. A useful test drawn from the survey: does the image still feel true months later, and does it improve the image that follows it? If a frame is only there because it was difficult to take, it’s usually the first one to cut.
Think in spreads and rhythm rather than individual images — as one photographer told NOICE, “what makes a photograph a good photograph is the one that follows it”. Pair images that talk to each other, vary the pacing, and leave breathing room. Our step-by-step photobook guide covers sequencing and layout in detail.
Ex Why Zed prints photobooks for photographers, artists and self-publishers across the UK, with free paper sample packs, complimentary file checks and tracked delivery. Explore photobook printing options or browse real printed projects for inspiration first.
Eighty-three photographers, seven themes, and not a word about megapixels. The lesson for self-publishing photographers is a freeing one: the qualities that make a photograph good — feeling, honesty, attention — are exactly the qualities a well-made book amplifies. Shoot with feeling, edit with honesty, sequence the story, and print with attention.
Our thanks again to @noicemag for asking the question and sharing what they found — go follow them, and submit your work while you’re there. And when your sequence is ready to become an object, we’d love to help you print it.
