What is the Point of Photography ?

[BillBingham2]

To me photography is about sharing your perspective or vision of something. To me, the magic is light, all the different types, sources, looks. Ansel Adams was a master of understanding time, position, and his tool to get the results he wanted. Gary Winogrand was more a master of the moment with a finely tuned situational awareness with a different set of tools.

One person might see a leaf still on a tree, another might see the squirrel looking for the perfect place for her nut, another might not notice anything but the crack in the sidewalk under their feet.

You mentioned a few days ago something about having a good eye, photography allows each of use to find her or his vision and capture it with a common set of tools. The tools we pick fit us, support our capturing your vision. Some folks look at me as crazy changing from my Leica Ms to a Nikon S2, it just felt better. Some people change cameras as some singer says “like a girl changes clothes”.

For me, photography give my creative side a way out. Can’t sing, write songs or stories, happy to have gotten good at painting walls and trim (can’t do water colors or oil). For me the point is that it’s a way to have fun and on good days bring a different vision or perspective into some else’s life.

Excellent question Ms. H!

B2 (;->

Hey Ms. TA, great to hear from you. Wonder how stuff is up north. Stay safe, healthy and in touch with your crazy family here.

 

[Beemermark]

That locomotive is still operational today:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Grande_class_K-28

I was out there last March, Durango, and got some shots of it leaving the station in the early morning. I just love pictures. Pictures are memories. One of the reason I love film is I forget to develop it and it will lay around sometimes for years. And then when I find that roll and develop it, it's like a time machine. When I look at that picture from 1959 I can remember it like it was yesterday. Farther, Mother, Brother, the ride, the excitement, everything. I have a terrible memory for things but looking at my photos brings it all back. While I've never though about the point of photography I guess that is the point. BTW that's my 2nd daughter in the photo (in her 40's) making a video with her smart phone.

 

[LCSmith]

A most enlightening read, this thread, and kudos to Helen for inciting conversation. Richard's observations, regarding the influence of photography on his work as a musician, are particularly interesting to me, especially what he says about negative space. What is excluded from a picture is almost as important as what is included. The negotiation of that compositional dance speaks to the active and nearly athletic aspect of photography. Here photography (i.e. its "point") becomes almost an exercise in vision, a learning to see clearly. It is not at all unreasonable to suppose that serious (i.e. intentional) practice of photography can change how we see the world.

 

[David Hughes]

There's no answer to the question really; so it's best to be philosophical and not think about it.


Regards, David

 

[LCSmith]

There's no answer to the question really


Regards, David

Hello, David!

I wonder whether I might push back slightly and say that the sheer diversity of responses here suggests otherwise. OK, so there's no "answer" answer. I'm not sure anyone would say there is, in seriousness; but an "answer" answer isn't really the point of the question.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Surprised no one mentioned getting lots of likes on Instagram, Flickr etc. ��

I knew one who was on tops of 500pix. Russian speaking from Toronto on Russian speaking from Toronto hosting site (500pix). 🙂.
This person is real artist. Does paintings for living.
He told me, if you want likes and be on top, you must photoshop your images.
Don't know if people really photograph to get likes. But it is possible to buy them. https://www.flickr.com/photos/182391177@N05/49321660582/

 

[Ricoh]

I knew one who was on tops of 500pix. Russian speaking from Toronto on Russian speaking from Toronto hosting site (500pix). 🙂.
This person is real artist. Does paintings for living.
He told me, if you want likes and be on top, you must photoshop your images.
Don't know if people really photograph to get likes. But it is possible to buy them. https://www.flickr.com/photos/182391177@N05/49321660582/

Oh I suspect they do, it releases feel good chemicals in the brain (is it dopamine ?). But buying them, I think that’s done for similar reasons, ie to make you look good and worth following, and itself releases more feel good chemicals.

I see a lot of mediocre images on Instagram that get loads of likes and pleasing comments, and I think to myself ***. But who am I to say whether they’re mediocre or not? And that brings us back to the original question by the OP, in a way!

 

[David Hughes]

Hello, David!

I wonder whether I might push back slightly and say that the sheer diversity of responses here suggests otherwise. OK, so there's no "answer" answer. I'm not sure anyone would say there is, in seriousness; but an "answer" answer isn't really the point of the question.

Hmmm, but as there is no answer I see the responses as a poll; polls are useful to determine popularity but philosophy is not about popularity. Look what it did for Paine, Hume and Wollstonecraft f'instance...

And as for asking questions, look where it got Socrates.

Regards, David

 

[Emile de Leon]

After I exhausted all the philosophical reasons for doing photography..
And all the business reasons..
And all the creative reasons..
And all the meditational reasons..
I came to the conclusion..
The 1 true reason for photography is..
To...buy..new...gear...hahahaha...

 

[LCSmith]

Hmmm, but as there is no answer I see the responses as a poll; polls are useful to determine popularity but philosophy is not about popularity. Look what it did for Paine, Hume and Wollstonecraft f'instance...

And as for asking questions, look where it got Socrates.

Regards, David

I think it's a personal question, David, which makes it interesting. I find it a bit odd, the reduction of personal responses to utility and "polls". This isn't one of those "what 35 LTM lens is your favorite" questions. This question is about biography and experience, even about unity.

As for Socrates, his death was most enviable.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Oh I suspect they do, it releases feel good chemicals in the brain (is it dopamine ?). But buying them, I think that’s done for similar reasons, ie to make you look good and worth following, and itself releases more feel good chemicals.

I see a lot of mediocre images on Instagram that get loads of likes and pleasing comments, and I think to myself ***. But who am I to say whether they’re mediocre or not? And that brings us back to the original question by the OP, in a way!

It is hard to tell, if likes are fake or not. Instagram itself makes good picture mediocre just by its GUI and crappy resolution.
On Flickr these parts are more advanced, but I'm under same impression.
For my taste, which lies within impressionists and Fred Herzog. I asked here at RFF once about wave of over processed images of people from India, those images flooded Flickr few years ago. They looked like images from earlier 2000 years with popular and primitive HDR. Bad images, was my comment, but many here at RFF liked those over processed images.

 

[jawarden]

Annie Dillard's masterpiece Pilgrim at Tinker Creek has a chapter called Seeing, and that's what it's about.

If Tinker Mountain erupted, I’d be likely to notice. But if I want to notice the lesser cataclysms of valley life, I have to maintain in my head a running description of the present… Like a blind man at the ball game, I need a radio.

When I see this way I analyze and pry. I hurl over logs and roll away stones; I study the bank a square foot at a time, probing and tilting my head. Some days when a mist covers the mountains, when the muskrats won’t show and the microscope’s mirror shatters, I want to climb up the blank blue dome as a man would storm the inside of a circus tent, wildly, dangling, and with a steel knife claw a rent in the top, peep, and, if I must, fall.

But there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer.​

I aspire to both kinds of seeing, but I'm mostly a blind man at a ball game, and my camera is the radio.

 

[LCSmith]

Annie Dillard's masterpiece Pilgrim at Tinker Creek has a chapter called Seeing, and that's what it's about.

When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer.​

Brilliant!

 

[TEZillman]

Garry Winogrand answered it and I doubt many can improve on the reasoning, rationally, that is to see what something looks like when it’s photographed.

Adding another Winogrand quote:

What does a camera do? What does photography do better than anything else, but describe? To use it for anything else is rather foolish." Garry Winogrand.

 

[jawarden]

Brilliant!

I think Annie must be a photographer, but don't know. Her description of her visual field during a total eclipse is pretty inside baseball as it relates to photography and printing. I won't say more to avoid ruining it for those who haven't been exposed to this gift of writing.


https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/

 

[LCSmith]

I think Annie must be a photographer, but don't know. Her description of her visual field during a total eclipse is pretty inside baseball as it relates to photography and printing. I won't say more to avoid ruining it for those who haven't been exposed to this gift of writing.


https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/

What sensuous, dream-like writing. I do not read nearly as much literary non-fiction as I ought to read! The attention to detail in her piece threads like an eye over a fine print.

One does think of that most famous eclipse photograph which, marvelously, is human in its interest and still resonates (I think):

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/43793

 

[Dralowid]

Photography is an excuse for owning and collecting bits of fine engineering and technical masterpieces from another age.

 

[Phil_F_NM]

No worries its only me.
Happy to participate in Helen's discussion.
Tuulikki

You made me instinctively, pay attention when I saw that picture of Tom! As always, wise words and a lesson were coming.
Then you made my eyes tear up! 🙂
All good things.

Stay safe and healthy!

Phil Forrest

 

[zuiko85]

The way I do it there ain’t no point.
......ok..well, you see, I like cool mechanical stuff and optics so naturally drawn to cameras. Old cameras. It’s no surprise that from the mid 70’s to mid 80’s as cameras transition from mechanical to electronic I lost interest in the equipment. If someone held out a 6x9 box camera and a Canon T90 and said I could have only one, then without delay I’d grab the box camera. That is how much I hate electronic cameras.
Silly? Sure, it’s a compulsion. I can handle it if I really want to, except, I don’t want to.

 

[Schuter]

Interesting read so far…Thank you, Helen. Honestly, I spend more time obsessing about the ‘how’ rather than the ‘why’ of photography. Years ago, it was how I made a living. Now I do it for different reasons.

My current vocation is analytical, logical, and completely devoid of any creative outlet (read: boring). I noticed years ago that my hobbies, interests, and passions outside of my work have a commonality: They are a blend of science and art. When I am playing a beautiful guitar, shooting an elegant rifle, or releasing the shutter on a classic camera, I am engaging logical and creative parts of my mind at the same time. These pursuits are challenging and rewarding in both technical and aesthetic ways. I don’t need anybody to hear the song, witness the shot, or see the photo to enjoy the experience. I am fully satisfied when I know I have risen to my own expectations, done my best, and achieved my goal within the confines of self-imposed limitations. Serotonin and dopamine are released in the brain, stress melts away, and I am a happier person as a result. I feel my best when I have that kind of equilibrium.

Okay, even that was too analytical. For me, the magic of photography is that I can look at an image I shot years ago, and it triggers the same emotions I experienced the moment I shot it. The memory nearly becomes palpable—I can almost feel the stifling heat as I recall the dark history inside the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, or smell Ivar’s fish and chips on Seattle’s Pier 54 as a light rain falls on my face amid the squawks of hungry seagulls. Good literature and music can transport me in similar ways, but for me an image is more powerfully evocative.

It appears that several of us stopped in our visual tracks as we noticed the profile photo of Tom in Tuulikkis’s first post in this thread. I never met Tom, and certainly don’t have the history of interaction with him that many of you have, but just seeing that little informal portrait caused me to pause and experience some cognitive dissonance, at least until I read further. Then I smiled. One tiny photo did that. I imagine that she has thousands of photos of Tom, just as Helen likely has thousands of photos of Eric. I hope photography allows them to relive moments through memories as it does me. If so, then it was time and silver well spent.

Wishing you all well,
Brian