Are Photographs Art?

Are all photographs works of art? It all depends upon your point of view. When you first put a crayon in the hand of your child, I doubt very strongly that he will produce something that looks like a Van Gogh painting, no one outside of your relatives would call it art but it still might make a place of honor on your refrigerator. Given time, your child may start to produce works that are true works of art, but the first attempts are rarely worth keeping. Photography is the same, your first photos are rarely keepers and many people never progress very far with their skills, but over time one can develop a technique and style that others respect.

Photography is painting with light. A good photographer takes notice of or controls the light he is using to compose his image. The camera records the scene and thus acts like an easel, paint brush and canvas for a painter. A portrait photographer has to keep in mind where he wants the shadows to fall, how intense they should be and their length. Landscape photographers also need to watch the light. Direct overhead lighting makes most scenes flat and uninteresting. That's why they tend to spend long periods of time waiting for the light to be right.

What the majority of people using cameras don't do is watch the light. Cameras are in the hands of more people and the skill set to use them to produce art is not. Just because one has a camera, it does not follow that you will produce an image like "Moon Rise over Half Dome" by Ansel Adams. Most people seem to think that Canon, Nikon, and every other camera maker have installed magic powers into their camera and it will render a scene perfectly simply by pushing a button. That is clearly not true based upon a quick review of photos on the internet.

Red eye is rampant in many of them. It is caused by the flash being located too close to the lens of the camera and is simply the result of the retina's blood vessels being lit up by wide open pupils. The camera makers have decided to try to eliminate this fault by providing multiple preflashes to cause the pupil to grow smaller and thus not let as much light hit the retina. This causes many people to look beady eyed (not a good look in most cases). The proper solution is to raise the flash at least 6" to 10" higher than the center of the lens.

You can correct the red eye in Photoshop, but you still are left with the other problem caused by the flash being so close to the lens, flat lighting. Flat lighting makes people look fatter. Shadows provide modeling and depth to an image. Flat lighting is great if you are photographing the broad side of a barn, but rarely looks good for people.

Is art defined as an act of creativity designed to elicit an emotional response from both the creator and the viewer? If so, the people that paint and do not produce work that will get to hang in the Louvre, is a far greater subset of the number of painters. Do we consider them all to be artists? If they are extremely passionate about their work but do not have the skill set needed to produce masterpieces, they are.

Photography is more like writing. The recorded image is designed to convey information more than emotion. But, what makes a photographer more like Hemingway telling a tale as opposed to your local newspaper's gossip columnist, is his ability to use the light to convey an emotional connection with the viewer. Good photography is closer to poetry, in that poets use words to convey emotional impact to the reader or listener. It is that emotional connection that makes photography art.

I aim my photography at the mind. It is sometimes designed to make you happy, but at other times it is to make you wonder if I am really that far gone!