Why do you photograph?

Edgar Allan’s Brain. Yellowstone River, Wyoming, 2011

So, what prompts you to photograph? What is it that makes photography so attractive to us?

Some of the obvious reasons might include…

–It’s nice to record events, people, places, your children, etc. so that you can go back and reminisce about the past.

–Documentation of a trip for your friends, relatives and you.

–To tell a story.

–To capture the beauty (and, sometimes, the ugliness!) of our world and hold that moment stationary in time.

–We like the technology involved…there is something tactally satisfying about working with a beautifully designed and funtional camera and lens.

–It’s fun and I like it!

Yes, I like photography for some of these reasons as well, but digging a little deeper, I find that there is more to it–at least in my case. Here are seven such personal thoughts:

First, to paraphrase Garry Winogrand, I actually do like to see what things look like when they are photographed, as opposed to what they look like to the naked eye. Sometimes this can be quite different. For example, water or clouds can be made to look very different depending on the shutter speed you use and images captured in the near dark at long shutter speeds can reveal things not readily visible at the moment. Infrared photography, which I have yet to try, will also render a scene much different than your eye. I like seeing these different effects.

I also like seeing how you can distort reality sometimes with different exposures and/or shutter speeds…high and low key images, for example…extreme over or under exposures for artistic effect, and so on.

I like how it really forces me to concentrate on the details of a scene. I notice things. I observe closely a lot more of the world. When I am “in the zone” observing and capturing images, it is very much like a meditative exercise.

Fourth, I like savoring the composition, color, tones of a well-composed and executed image–it’s like a visual candy treat that can be savored again and again.

Next, I like the idea of photography as a way of capturing one small square or rectangle of order in a visual universe that may often appear cluttered and random.

Sixth, it is a way to seal in permanence (for as long as the print lasts anyway) one moment in time that would have been forever lost. Maybe that means it is a way of holding onto the past (our youth!) and cheating old age and death?

Last, and this is related to my last two points, but goes farther. I think I look to try to put some sort of order in my life, faced with what can often seem to be a very random and chaotic universe. Both tragedies and dramatic wonderful accomplishments sometimes seem to occur without reason. Life has many unanswered questions and many of us humans suffer from existential angst chewing on these great enigmas. In the face of that, capturing a nice, neat, bordered, finite, piece of reality seems like a good way to attempt to impose a stamp of order and control on a universe that is very difficult for us to make sense of. Kind of like when I was a wee tyke, neatly placing my shoes together and placing my folded pants and shirt on top at the end of the day…it is a way to try to control and make order out of what is not completely understood and not completely within our control.

And yes, of course, it is just plain enjoyable!

So, why do you photograph then? Hopefully some of my comments have prompted some deeper thinking on your part. Or, maybe you are thinking, as thought an old camp counselor for delinquent boys I once knew, CCCarl: “Vy can’t vee chust take pictures!”