Why do you shoot what you shoot?

J

jky

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As a spawn off of the thread "What is Street Photography" & Backalley's style thread...
I'm just wondering why you shoot what it is you shoot?
(not counting the client-driven photos for the pros among us - unless it coincides with your true passion) - I'll start.

I am fascinated by the life around me and the interactions that occurr. I enjoy snaps of these to keep in my personal shoebox of "I was there - doing this - at that particular time of day & it may never ever happen again". Many appear boring & occasionally (or rarely rather) some look okay. But the point is that I've captured my surroundings and its forever stored in my shoebox.

Cheers!
 
I think posts (1) and (2) work for me. Throw in Winogrand's famous remark, plus something I said to someone 20 years back about photography as a form of self-therapy, and I think I'm done.


- Barrett
 
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"There"

"There"

As a climber I can attest to the difficulty of answering the question "Why do you climb?". I think its similarly hard to answer the question posed above, and for similar reasons. Some have posited that climbing is the lazy persons way to the state of mind that many people spend their lives trying to attain through more spiritually based pursuits. In this vein it has been suggested, and seems to me, that the term "there" is more than an off the cuff quip. "There" represents a state of mind where you are living in and completely focused on the moment. You are "there". When you are climbing hard you are focused on and living completely in the moment. You are "there". I think the same can be said of photography. When you are completely absorbed in the fact and act of composing, waiting for the light or the action with your finger poised on the shutter release you are "there". I'll bet we have all experienced this feeling of being completely caught up in the act and the process of catching that special moment or play of light on a scene. We enjoy it because it (or we) is/are "there". Also I just like to use cool cameras.
 
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"Also I just like to use cool cameras"... Amen to that!

My OP was just beating around the bush to the truth of the matter... gear! :)
 
Because it was there and I had a cool camera with me and I wanted to see what it would look like in a photo and it was reasonably cheap therapy. All works for me, to which I would add; it's a good excuse for a stroll.
 
I shoot family snapshots, because everybody needs photos of family, friends etc. - don't they?

I take photos when I travel, to remind me of the places I've been to and what they look like - and to review "how things have changed" when I re-visit.

I take photos of wildlife (mostly birds, but other critters as well) because I think animals look wonderful and I like having "preserved moments" of them looking just like that.

I take photos of people, because people are interesting and I like having "preserved moments" of people being interesting.

I take photos of things I'm about to take apart, in the folorn hope that might help me put them back together again.

I take photos to illustrate things that can't be easily conveyed in words.

I take photos because the processes involved interest me, as does the equipment, and because I enjoy the challenge of trying to capture in a physical medium what I was seeing or imagining when I looked at what was in front of me (even if I don't often succeed).

I guess I take lots of different kinds of photos for lots of different reasons, many of which I don't even know myself.

...Mike
 
Because I love art. And I can't draw or paint, so I took up photography. Whats that saying: The world is a canvas & my camera is the paint brush. Well I guess that sums up my expression.:)
 
I shoot street because I spend so much time in the studio and on interiors controlling every single detail - I like to be able to let go and let the situation control things for a bit.
 
Therapy, cool cameras, can't paint, can't write, and what Steve B said. I'm there.

Sometimes my wife asks me, "Why do you take pictures without people in them?" and when there are, "Why do you take pictures of people you don't know?"
 
Don't want to sound pretentious, but sometimes I look at something and it says photograph to me, so I take a picture.

Ian
 
I shoot mostly on the streets, because I love telling stories with photos, and unlike many of my nature and landscape photobuds, mine is not a search for beauty.
 
Just like many of the rest of these folks, it's my "there", my moment of mindfulness. My life is so busy with long work hours, three teenagers, etc. that photography has become a refuge for me. And you may judge me really wierd for saying this, but I truly enjoy every little aspect; from loading film into my M2, to the feeling of advancing the lever and seeing the two red dots turn, to metering the light, composing the shot, focusing, hearing the whisper of the shutter, etc. all the way to showing a newly developed print to my family. It's all special for me and every step is my escape from the "noise" of daily routine.

Oh, and I take photos of anything I feel like at the moment (I've even been known to shoot a couple of frames of the inside of my car just to finish a roll and take it into the lab)...but don't tell anybody
 
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Why I shoot...

Why I shoot...

I shoot my family so I can have a visual record to enjoy when I get older and they have a record of what happened during their childhood.

I shoot pictures of anything just to keep my mind and the motions fresh.

I shoot pictures of myself as a form of a diary.

And I shoot airplanes and the people who fly them because it's what I love and what I love to do.
 
My camera is a visual stopwatch. I push the button and that split second is captured. Time is fluid and is constantly moving forward but my camera makes it possible to preserve the people and lifestyle that I'm interested in. It gives us the ability to reflect on the past and compare it to the present possibly even predict the future. In some cases it connects us to our own past reminding us how far we have come.
 
A little addition the the excellent answers above,

I take pictures because when I saw the same pictures again several years from now, all the memories, feelings, and mood came back to me. I think that's kinda cool.

Just like the posts in this forum really.
 
"Because, unlike Salvador Dalí, I can't paint, and like H. Cartier-Bresson, I can't draw."

Gabriel, nice one... I feel the same way:D

shadowfox said:
A little addition the the excellent answers above,

I take pictures because when I saw the same pictures again several years from now, all the memories, feelings, and mood came back to me. I think that's kinda cool.

Just like the posts in this forum really.
Click to expand...

It's nice to look back at pictures taken from many years ago & feel like I'm right back there.... (thinner with a six-pack!)
 
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