Why do you take pictures?

Addiction, compulsion, documentation, communication, creation, preservation of sanity. Yeah I get it all. The gear too. And the sharing and the joy of having someone else really like something I've done. Mainly I think I do it because it's the one creative thing I've been able to do fairly well and sustain for over 40 years. I was a mediocre to lousy poet, songwriter, guitarist, singer, artist and pretty much everything else I tried. But photography was always fun and it came to me easily. Guess I do it 'cause I'm lazy.
 
I walk for my health. With a camera in my hand I feel energized, I can walk all day. Life becomes an adventure. What’s around the next corner is wondrous and exciting. The people on the street are so interesting, they are walking breathing stories that need to be photographed and shared. Architecture, nature, people, the ships tied to the pier… everything is beautiful!

Without a camera in my hand I can’t walk more than a block without feeling tired and bored.

It’s like that for me.

Mike
 
They're not going to take themselves!

Also, having my camera(s) sitting on my table is unnerving.

What's strange in my recent "process" is that I have many rolls of film that I've developed and the negatives are just sitting in sleeves for months. Seems like I'm enjoying taking the photos more these days, and not actually concerned with the resulting photos themselves. Someday I'll get to scanning/printing them...maybe...
 
to have fun, make things that should exist in the world, meet new people, learn about interesting things, develop new skills (social, intellectual, artistic), get out and get some physical activity, get ideas for work.
 
To capture my own feelings about a certain moment.
Or to make a specific image by using the available light/dark.
These days photography is far more introspective than story telling. I'm no longer a journalist so I now make images for me and how I feel.

Phil Forrest
 
Why did cavemen draw on walls? Why did da Vinci paint Mona Lisa? Humans have an innate compulsion to make visual records of things that are important to them. Taking photos is a way of doing that quickly in a way that also allows artistic expression. And it's fun.
 
I take pictures of my birth and home town, where there are many beautiful scenes and buildings that are usually obscured by ugly clutter like road signs, parked cars, hideous buildings, trees ect.

The images I create from that town are dreams etched in silver, to transform it into a sort of nirwana.


I'm looking to enhance my daily scenes so that I can endure and relish them.

There's not so much I enjoy in photography and in daily life anymore and this is my way to come to terms with that loss I suppose.
 
Because it's great fun, to learn how to pay attention, to find out how to better express myself (it's easier than writing), and because I love nifty machines.
 
because a camera in my hand transforms the environment into an infinite potentially interesting and beautiful field.


And because I have fun, specially when using old, manual lenses, there also is the wish to document, and because it's my hobby. right, it's good to have a hobby :)
 
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