- Camera-thinking Generated
Imagination-thinking Generated -
At its lowest denominator, a camera is just a conglomeration of metal, glass, and plastic. It is nothing more than a tool. While a tool defined on many levels, I consider a camera as just a way into your heart, your eyes, or your brain. It is a pathway that works both ways as stated by Ansel Adams. It lets your heart and feelings flow outward while allowing information to flow inward for you to process.
Photography is not about a camera no matter its quality or price. It is about you the photographer. You are brighter and more creative than any camera ever made. It can be used to convey your thinking, feeling, or seeing that coalesces into what your brain’s imagination creates from the data it receives from all your senses.
Embrace your photography as a creative medium. See your camera as just another tool to create and bring your vision to life. The process of creating art (via your imagination and creativity) is not one that can be controlled. Any attempt to control the process only serves to restrict it and the results will be limited.
Precision is the enemy of creativity.
Thus you, as the photographer/artist, should be asking yourself: “what does photography mean to me?”. That will then help you determine your own visual language we sometimes refer to as “style”.
- Mark Lissick
I have always had a passion for creativity and its relationship with imagination. Fueled by that passion, the two became the foundation of my photographic endeavors. I have been called a philosophical photographer. My approach to photography runs counter to the more conventional thinking of what photography is (or expected to be). As such, my ever-evolving photographic “style” reflects how I define photography.
This emphasis on the photographer runs counter to our thinking about photography. When we start out as a photographer what comes to mind initially is the equipment. The first thing we usually ask a fellow photographer is “what do you shoot with?”. The second question that immediately follows is “what subjects do you shoot?”. The third is about favorite locations.
Thus, in starting out, many think that camera equipment, subject, and location
are the secrets to producing great photography.
After that, the emphasis then turns to skills and techniques with the camera, lenses, filters, and computer software. After learning the technical skills to capture a picture (data acquisition to be more precise), the next emphasis is on editing and processing. You will note through all of this that the emphasis on the first and most important step in the process – the photographer and their creativity, visualization, and imagination that initially triggers the desire to create a picture, is forgotten.
An image is first created by the photographer’s imagination.
Only then can it be created in the camera with effective results.
Photography does not begin with the camera.
It begins with you and the artist inside.
If you adhere to the commonplace thinking that your camera gear and technological processes will create great images for you, then you will be finding that your results will generally be disappointing. A good photograph, one that most closely matches your response to a scene, begins with an image created in your mind using the forces that shape your creativity and imagination. We all do it and it is done before we even put the camera to our eye. It is just that
…we ignore the image created by our imagination.
We focus instead on the “how to take the picture” aspect of the process of bringing an image into reality. The camera, lenses, and techniques are nothing more than tools we have available to us to bring the imagination-based image to life.
Putting the photographer and imagination first and the equipment second will produce tangible results. There is a difference on many levels between an image that puts more emphasis on skills than one created from our imagination.
A skills-based image puts importance on exposure, precision, sharpness, natural-based color, and realism (whether historic or current). An artist-based image starts with an idea and an impression first visualized by the photographer. This may change the “reality” of a scene with color shifts, distortions, visual emphasis, abstractions, or a sense of timelessness.
WHAT REALLY IS PHOTOGRAPHY
I have always had a passion for creativity and its relationship with imagination. Fueled by that passion, the two became the foundation of my photographic endeavors. I have been called a philosophical photographer. My approach to photography runs counter to the more conventional thinking of what photography is (or expected to be). As such, my ever-evolving photographic “style” reflects how I define photography.
I work to create images that tell their own visual story while visually blurring the boundary between art and the classical perception of photography.
How is this possible? For me, it started with the need to answer the question: “What is Photography?” It is a question whose answer constitutes the very foundation of what the craft of photography really is built on.
Photography is a form of artistic expression and art, as we know it, has its roots in creativity. In other words, art is something that is created with a combination of:
- imagination - visualization - and skill
that we feel is beautiful or expresses important ideas or feelings and emotions. Thus, creative art, especially the visual arts, are those works that are to be appreciated primarily or solely for their imaginative, aesthetic, or intellectual content.
In photography, the images we consider to be most pleasing are those that have adhered to the ones created with the photographer’s imagination. Note here that I referenced the “photographer” and not the process of “photography”. Photography then is best considered as a medium for creative expression.
Photography is a form of artistic expression. The most pleasing images are those created in line with the vision and imagination of the photographer as artist.
Due to the nature of the craft when it was first invented, photography has long been rejected as a form of art. In its infancy, photography was defined and considered to be nothing more than a medium for documentation. How did this perception come about? The ability to produce a photograph is based on science, engineering, and chemistry, and now more modern digital technologies. Unlike other art mediums it is extremely accessible with some 1.7 billion photographs currently being taken every day! Everyone has access to photography.
Also, what the camera records can also be changed/manipulated via chemical print making and now digital technology. The Photoshop syndrome conflicts with the original and long-standing perception of a simple recording media.
The question now arises as to whether it is even a photograph anymore. Is it art? That rigid perception of photography being nothing more than a recording method is slowly evolving into an acceptance of it as a form of creative art.
Perhaps instead of trying to think of photography as art
we should think of the photographer as an artist.
Art begins with the artist and not with the tools used to create the work. When you define the photographer as an artist it is not about the equipment or the technique. It is about the artist’s intention.
All humans are born with the ability to imagine and create. This can be easily observed in every child engaged in play. With the inherited ability to create there is an inner artist awaiting expression. The medium chosen for that expression is the decision of the individual, but photography is one of those choices.
With the perspective changed from photography to photographer, a better way of viewing good photography is one that contains imaginative, aesthetic, or intellectual content that expresses important feelings or ideas. These are ones that represent the photographer’s vision as an artist regardless of the equipment or techniques used.
For those of you who love to take pictures, I hate to burst your bubble but my philosophy and image-making perspective is that: