“Because it is big in scale does not mean that it can’t have impact as an intentional photograph. The camera only sees one frame at a time, and unless you get into some of the multiple-image techniques, you’ve got to rely on one image to make the impression. I tend to be careful in my own work, not to yield to the easy temptation to over-dramatize things just to make this impression—and as a corollary, I also tend to be less impressed with the group led by Ernst Haas, who make their point by highly romantic over-dramatics. They go too far, I think, but certainly something more than pointing the camera and making a snapshot is indicated. Snapshots have their place, but I assume at the outset that you want to make a deeper impression, create something that communicates a little more powerfully. The only recipe I know for it is a four-letter word: work (experience, practice).”

If you just happen to bring someone else along for the ride when they see your image, well, then it becomes art. Art is simply the transfer of emotion by its creator to another by some medium.

But you don’t need an audience to have art, you can simply view your work again later and reinvoke how you felt out there while creating it, it’s still art, but just a tad more personal.

Nice photo, Guy, beautiful colors, motion, and joi de vivre. I’d call it art, it makes me feel free.

Guy

Good photography requires an understanding and application of the principles of design – this takes intuition, study and experience. While anyone can take a photograph after buying a camera, I would argue anyone can also play a couple of notes on a new musical instrument after purchasing it – though it’s certainly not art or music until the person becomes much more skilled. The same is true in photography – it takes a lot of time and experience to take great photographs.

An artist is someone that uses their craft (writing, painting or photography) to express themselves and how they feel about a subject. What constitutes good art is highly debatable, especially when one studys art by so called photography masters. I have seen photographs by the best photographers that I would label as crap. The point is good art is something that holds are attention, it makes us feel and then it makes us think. A photograph can do that. Also historically their have been two schools of photography – the realists or documentary photographers and the pictorialists or those that feel they can manipulate images in processing, printing or computer. Both are valid in my opinion. So called documentary photographers also manipulate their image by choosing different lenses, shooting in black and white or selecting different filters and angles. When will photographes realize, we don’t see the same way a camera sees – we see in colour and we have stereo vision. Our brain processes the images so that even two people looking at the same thing see them differently. A camera is a tool which in the hands of a skilled artist can result in art. My cameras have yet to go out and take any pictures themselves.

Of course if you want to believe that photographers are just technicians that is up to you. You might want to check out David Hockneys book, secret knowledge – he suggests that many of our greatest painters used optical devices, lenses and mirrors to assist them. Yet it’s still art.

I wish good photographers would stop saying that photography can’t be art because we use a tool. Writers use pencils, typewriters, word processors – these are also tools, but without human input do not produce art.

I like the definition Tim’s friend uses – art, craft and soul. In my example, I’m not sure any of them are in play (maybe craft to some extent). Certainly no soul and few, if any, would ascribe the term “art” to the result.

So the artist is the crucial element. That’s why I’m always looking to find the artist in their work. And, to be honest, there is a lot of photography that is so much about the subject that I can’t find the artist at all.

A lot of landscape photography falls in this category for me, because it is so easy and tempting to just set up the tripod in front of a beautiful scene and capture it literally. Yes, it’s a pretty shot, but where is the Soul? Most landscape photographers love the outdoors and they seem to mostly be capturing the scenes that remind them of why they like being there. But more is needed. I might like cultivating roses, but if I just set up my camera in front of beautiful roses and take the photograph, the pictures might be beautiful but I suspect they would be a little one-dimensional. I think it’s actually harder to do really good landscape photography than other genres for this reason. It’s such a challenge for the artist to find a way to express themselves in the midst of all that grandeur. There is great landscape photography out there, I just think there are a lot of “scenic” captures that leave me wanting more.

Much of photography is craft. There is nothing wrong with craft, it takes a certain sort of brain to learn craft well. Once the craft has become instinctive, it becomes a part of you; This is when ‘you’ can create art rather than trying to convince the camera to create art.

I think this is what people like Picasso learned formal fine art; to get past the process/craft and remove the barriers that they place in the path of creativity. The artist can then apply as much or as little of the craft as they think necessary to achieve their vision.

A colleague splits his photography into three parts, Art, Craft and Soul. Art is the communication of soul through craft. The description may sound trite but I like it..