Why do you make photographs?

Pieter12 · Oct 22, 2023

CMoore said:
I hope to become Rich & Famous.

With my luck, i will be reloading film in my stupid "Film Camera"......... and a 15 year old, with a cell phone will get 30 frames of a 747, crash landing in a cornfield, and coming to a stop 40 Meters from a High School full of teenagers, all watching the disaster, at lunch time

Except the teenagers will be watching the livestream on their phones.

Vaughn · Oct 23, 2023

CMoore said:
I hope to become Rich & Famous.

With my luck, i will be reloading film in my stupid "Film Camera"......... and a 15 year old, with a cell phone will get 30 frames of a 747, crash landing in a cornfield, and coming to a stop 40 Meters from a High School full of teenagers, all watching the disaster, at lunch time

My photo prof at university said always have a camera ready with you. He started doing street photography in Oakland and such in the 40s. Of course, now the vast number of the population have cameras with them 24/7. But his words came back to me in the mid-80s when I was in my VW Bug, waiting at a stop light in Eureka, CA in front of the County Jail. To my left and across the street was a two story apt building with a painted mural of the classic Japanese Wave on it. I could see two ladies on the second floor in a double window located in the middle of The Wave -- they had their pants and panties down to their knees and shirts up to their necks, sticking various body parts out the window for the enjoyment of the poor boys locked in the jail.

The light turned green, so I relunctantly drove off. No camera, no image. Today it would have made a NSFW but popular video. The apt building is long gone during the expansion of the jail.

George Mann · Oct 24, 2023

I don't make photographs, I take them. Why? Because I like to see what things look like on film.

CMoore · Oct 24, 2023

George Mann said:
I don't make photographs, I take them. Why? Because I like to see what things look like on film.

This is a good topic for discussion.
That phrase has always bothered me.
It kind of sounds disingenuous to me.

We take pictures and make prints.

George Mann · Oct 24, 2023

CMoore said:
We take pictures and make prints.

If I could make prints I would.

Don_ih · Oct 24, 2023

CMoore said:
We take pictures and make prints.

But the pictures aren't there until someone takes them. It's like magic.

"Make photos" sounds bad, though. Like there are ingredients or parts and assembly or cooking is required.

George Mann said:
If I could make prints I would.

It's not difficult. Making good prints can be hard, but enlarging itself is pretty straightforward.

Pieter12 · Oct 24, 2023

Don_ih said:
But the pictures aren't there until someone takes them. It's like magic.

"Make photos" sounds bad, though. Like there are ingredients or parts and assembly or cooking is required.

It's not difficult. Making good prints can be hard, but enlarging itself is pretty straightforward.

But there are ingredients: subject, angle, composition, instant of exposure, etc. Plus technical ingredients: film, lens, exposure, processing, etc. Mix them judiciously and you have a nice photograph.

jtk · Oct 27, 2023

I almost never click unless I intend to print the image....or unless i am doing something that feeds that intent. The exceptions are usually technical/experimental, means the clicks are rarely photographs.

Pieter12 · Oct 27, 2023

jtk said:
I almost never click unless I intend to print the image....or unless i am doing something that feeds that intent. The exceptions are usually technical/experimental, means the clicks are rarely photographs.

Why would experimental work not be a photograph?

jtk · Oct 29, 2023

Pieter12 said:
Why would experimental work not be a photograph?

that's an amusing distraction. however, "a photograph" most often refers to one frame, which would be less useful than mutlple frames for experimental work. frame #1 vs a bracket or series..

Pieter12 · Oct 29, 2023

jtk said:
that's an amusing distraction. however, "a photograph" most often refers to one frame, which would be less useful than mutlple frames for experimental work. frame #1 vs a bracket or series..

Tell that to the late Jerry Uelsmann. Or the hundreds of pros who use focus stacking. Not to mention the ill-informed who do HDR. Or zipper-heads and other composited images.

albireo · Nov 2, 2023

Miles579 said:
I love capturing the beauty of nature, people's emotions and special moments in life. Photography is a way for me to tell a story and preserve memories.

AnselMortensen · Nov 2, 2023

George Mann said:
I don't make photographs, I take them. Why? Because I like to see what things look like on film.

I think Gary Winogrand said that first.

AnselMortensen · Nov 2, 2023

There aren't any caves around for me to leave hand prints on the walls.

Why do you make photographs?

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