One thing that kind of raises my hackles is when people talk of “taking” a photo, as if the image was right there to be picked up, like a tomato at the supermarket. However we never talk of “taking” a painting (unless you are an art thief…). Why is that? For some reason it is understood that it is a lot of hard work to MAKE a painting, you need to choose the right brushes, create the appropriate palette, etc. However, there is no consideration of choosing right lens or making an appropriate colour balance. Yes, I understand that a lot of photographs are “taken”, with cell phones for example, where no thought is given to the artistic merits of the final image. But I think there is a distinction between a snapshot (for want of a better word{{1}}) and Art photographs (again for want of a better word).<\/p>\n
So what is the difference? Maybe it comes down to making or taking a photo. Did the photographer make a decision on what and how to photograph? Did the artist think about what the final image would look like? Was there something the artist wanted to communicate with other viewers?<\/p>\n
Whether the artist was successful or not, of course has to come into play at some point, but IMNSHO{{2}} intent is paramount. If you try to make art you have created at least an attempt at art. If you are not trying to make art, you can never make a piece of art.<\/p>\n
[[1]]I know there are a few very good photographic artists who pursue the snapshot as an art form, but I would still argue that they still do not “take” their images, and exercise a lot of control on the final image.[[1]]<\/p>\n
[[2]]In My Not So Humble Opinion. … There may be “accidental” artistic masterpieces, but they are rare, and possibly the exception that proves the rule.[[2]]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One thing that kind of raises my hackles is when people talk of “taking” a photo, as if the image was right there to be picked up, like a tomato at the supermarket. However we never talk of “taking” a painting (unless you are an art thief…). Why is that? For some reason it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lessons","category-photography","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}