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Other articlesSimple Guide to buying a digital CameraSLR cameras in the digital future  Dancers in waiting, Spanish Quarter Festival, Liverpool Street, Sydney September 3, 2006 Interested in Photo Sydney Courses? Full course details here Crash course details here Short course details here |
Why photography? Camera skills should be treated as vital to a happy life: to be taught, learned and nurtured. It's one of the greatest gifts of the modern world, combining the best of technology and the traditions of art. Article by Greg Dickins, Photo Sydney, updated May 2008 Photography is so much a part of everyday life that few now give the medium much thought. This familiarity (coming close to contempt) dictates the character of the medium. To understand still photography better, the medium should be considered in two parts. First is commercial and professional photography. This medium is now a veritable bombardment of images constantly presented. The sheer volume inevitably dulls appreciation of what we see. In the space of 20 years, improved publishing technologies have seen even newspaper pictures move from dotty black & grey smudges to the sharpest detail in full, glowing colour. Secondly there is the medium of the snapshot. For most of us, this is the important function. It's the preserving of memories – family, friends, events, holidays and home life. Consciousness of this split reality is deeply ingrained from birth and it is a feature of the medium as a whole. Since the invention of photography, its practitioners have divided as professionals or amateurs. In the print industry, photographers often get the nickname 'snapper'. It's a joke for writing journalists but sums up with a smile a primary truth about photography. It's different now Until quite recently, professionals had a significant edge on quality and accessibility. But now, improving photo technology allows the mass of photographers, the amateurs, the opportunity to close the gap. Snapshotters now have the potential to create, by taking the trouble to learn, superior pictures (in terms of their own needs) and, even art to pass down to future generations. So it's not surprising that commercial photographic studios, specialising in family portraits are down in numbers and often struggle to make a living. By the same token, we now see newspapers, appealing through their web sites to amateur readers for pictures of news events that they miss or are unable to cover. The revolution is happening right now. It started just recently with the coming-of-age in digital picture making. The newest cameras give anyone (who takes the trouble to learn) the potential to create still pictures to match – and even rival – the beauty of the great classic painters. Those who learn to practice photography with ease and skill will enjoy a richer life. The accessibility and simplicity of the digital medium opens this opportunity to anyone who cares to grasp it. Photography's combination of creativity and captured emotion is open to all. What is art? So what about the question of art. Photography should be seen as an extension of the art of the painter. The relationship is so close that confusion and argument over the art in photography has continued since the beginnings of the medium. But undeniably, painters changed direction after the birth of photography. Painters moved away from the prime motivation of depicting reality in two dimensions to divergent pictorial inventions. So it is mainly left to photographers to carry forward the traditions established by painters from the earliest times. Of course painters required the special manual skills of drawing and drafting. These skills are a gift and born to fortunate individuals. The great painters combined those manual skills with the additional gift of being able to visualise and depict human emotion in two dimensions. These were real artists and they are recognised by their ability to 'speak' through their work the following generations. But the once unlucky ones who only have the gift of visual imagination (but can't draw), now have their chance. Photography is their medium. © This article is by Greg Dickins of Photo Sydney, Copyright 2008 and should only be reproduced with the author's permission. |