×
Need help? Let's chat

Blog

Why take a Photo, Why make an Image – is it the Beauty?

I want to start with a question; The beauty in this scene – is it by chance or design?

As an Artist working with Photography as my medium people may ask – why this image? Well, to me, an image is captured and made for several reasons. But first – the basics of a photo are simple and mechanical – the way photographs are made: ( from Andrew Molitor- PataPixel).

“The camera records a scene automatically, mechanistically, and in a very detailed way…. Something on the back of the box mechanistically records that two-dimensional copy of the world, and makes something out of it. Maybe it makes an exposed film, maybe it makes a digital file, it doesn’t really matter what it makes. It makes something we can turn into a flat representation, a rectangle covered with blobs of tone and color. When we look at this rectangle of blobs, it causes a visual response that’s similar to what would have happened if we’d looked at the original scene.”

Also, read- https://gitaphotos.com/blog/gone-but-not-forgotten/

One of the Masters of Photography Henri Cartier Bresson said this – “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression. This is what he called the “decisive moment” and while he was a street photographer it holds true to all photos and images. They capture a decisive moment the instant the shutter is fired.

Another of the Masters Eliot Porter explains it this way. Every photograph that is made whether by one who considers himself a professional, or by the tourist who points his snapshot camera and pushes a button, is a response to the exterior world, to something perceived outside himself by the person who operates the camera.

These insights resonate with me! I am fascinated by the moment ( the Special Moments I call them ) that happen in nature and the landscape and my effort is based on making an image to capture and preserve these moments of , for me, awestruck reaction to what is created before my eyes.

Yet another of the Masters ( Edward Weston ) said this; “ The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer’s understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.” While yet another of the Masters known for his landscape work ( Ansel Adams ) made some very poignant comments on the topic:

Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream?

A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.

Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter.

September-Calls-201x300.jpg
September Calls

And one most poignant quote from a Master as I close this post:

Edward Steichen “ A photograph is worth a thousand words, provided it is accompanied by only ten words.”

So, I ask again , with fuel for reaction from quotes given and the images presented – in light of these insights quoted :

The beauty in this scene(s) – by chance or design?

.
Updated:

Blog