Is it right, to take, or to make photographs?
I’ve often wondered why sometimes, language used for image making often has an acquisitional aspect to it. Words such as capture, or to take an image resonate with me in a rather negative way.
I was asked once, why I always seem to say that I make photographs, not take them. I hadn’t been aware of my own language, but after some time thinking about it, I know why I use the word make.
Firstly, there is the sense that I am creating something, rather than pointing my camera at something and just copying what is there. To take a photograph suggests I’m copying what is already there, and this is perhaps a terrible mindset to be in. Our mindset being an important part of the picture making process (not picture taking process).
Secondly, I don’t go making images so that I have a collection. I am not a collector, and the idea that I take an image, suggests stealing a moment. It suggests ownership of something that was not mine and never can be. It suggests the habit of a collector, rather than someone who is in empathy with his surroundings and wishes to work with it, rather than at it.
Thirdly, taking implies possession; possession implies a sense of oneself being superior to the landscape. It suggests a lack of respect for what is around me, and someone who is not receptive to what the landscape is. It implies a lack of emotional connection.
I make images. They are creations based upon what I saw and appreciated in reality.
I enjoy my time outside, listening to the sounds of the wind and rain, watching atmospheric conditions come and go. I feel very much in empathy with my surroundings. Like a camper who, once done ‘leaves only footprints’, I have the utmost respect for the places I make images of. I like to think of my images as being an interpretation of the places i’ve experienced. I can’t take the landscape’s spirit. I can only represent it, in the form of art that I make.
Perhaps this feels to you as if I’m splitting hairs. But isn’t it true that, often it’s the small things that matter, and by having the mindset that I do have, I feel I’m able to abstract my creations away from the landscapes they represent. I’m able to understand that what I do, is an interpretation of what was before my eyes, not a verbatim recording of it.
It’s an important point, I feel.
Agree whole heartedly with you Bruce. My sentiments exactly. I feel that making a photograph is a form expressing emotion. So, it’s certainly not taking. I’d rather like to think of it as a process of deriving inspiration from an experience you are going through, and then transforming all those feelings with the help of past experiences to cast a beautiful description of emotion :)
Comment by Lakshitha — 19 February, 2013 @ 4:46 pm
Bruce-
Still learning this myself, but couldn’t agree more. It’s not semantics in the least. I only wished I had realized it sooner. If you TAKE a photograph, you MAKE a snapshot. Made photographs have intent, taken photographs don’t. It doesn’t matter if its photojournalism or fine art. The photos that are published in places like NatGeo and Time are MADE. The more I watch and read interviews with any photographer that has ever done work for publications like those, I see that common theme more than any other.
In fact, read an interview with a photographer named Gregory Heisler today where he said he worked on the lighting and composition on a shot for Sports Illustrated ALL DAY and did the shoot in 10 minutes. That’s making an image.
I really believe that the most important question for us as photographers is “Why?” The “why” defines the “what” and the “how.” Without the “why?” we just get “what” (a replication of the subject).
Of course, sometimes you get lucky to be in the right place at the right time, but in the words of a golfer named Ben Hogan “The more I practice, the luckier I seem to get!” ;)
Comment by ScottTurner — 19 February, 2013 @ 7:00 pm
Hi Bruce – I would like to pick up on a point you made when you wrote “I make images. They are creations based upon what I saw and appreciated in reality.” A similar sentiment is expressed by your reader Lakshitha when she wrote in comment #1, “making a photograph is a form of expressing emotion.”
These two comments express exactly what photography has become for me. In a sense, it is what photography was for me way back when, at the age of 14, I started making images in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina. These were amongst my first images and the ones I made there were rather abstract leaving it unclear as to what it was I was photographing. Yet, I liked the emotions these images evoked in me. I still recall them so many years later, even though I have long ago lost the photographs themselves.
For me, photography is mostly about creating an image that helps its viewer understand something of how I felt while I was at the location where the photograph was made. Thus, a few of my images are abstract, in some cases very much so, because that is the best way I can, at the moment, evoke the emotion I am trying to express. That said, most are taken from a mostly natural perspective, and of clearly identifiable elements, because that is what seems most appropriate at the time. And as a result of this approach, the making of many of my images are entirely intuitive. As I frame the scene, I do not knowingly make use of any logic that tells me where I should be placing objects in the image. I follow no design rules at all, even though I have in recent years learned some of those that contribute to good images.
Sometimes, when people look at my images they ask me, “Is this how the scene looked or did you Photoshop the image?” The question is always asked in a kind manner, yet in a way it is somewhat accusatory. I have learned to reply with a series of questions, saying something along the lines of, “Does it really matter? Do you like the mood it conveys? How does it make you feel?” People do not expect that answer and tend to be much more open afterwards. Funny, but they do not tend to ask that question about some of my abstract images, where it is rather difficult to tell what the subject matter actually was.
Comment by Steve N — 20 February, 2013 @ 1:41 am
Hi Scott,
I agree – the question as to ‘why’, defines the ‘what’ and then the ‘how’. I think that the ‘why’ is not so much a question, but more an emotional response. We respond to something emotionally, and that drives us to make an image of it. It’s more about us responding to a feeling rather than some analytical thought, which ties in with what Latshika and Steve both say – ‘transforming all those feelings with the help of past experiences to cast a beautiful description of emotion ‘.
I think we are all describing the same thing, but we are all using our own form of language to describe it.
I just despise any words in photography that suggest it is an acquisitional endeavour. That makes it sound like an aggressive activity, rather than one where we are in tune with our surroundings.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 20 February, 2013 @ 7:42 am
Great summary and an important point on how an individual will see photography. The comparison to a collector is interesting, in the same way that many photographers travel to the same locations, gather at the same meeting point, all with the goal of the same image they set out to find.
Comment by stephendesroches — 22 February, 2013 @ 4:11 pm
Bruce-
Agreed. Wasn’t trying to downplay the importance of emotional response, although, I admit, I tend to justify my emotions through analytical thought. Just the way I’m wired I suppose.
I have found that some intentional thought helps me personally though, as my tendency is to “snap away” without slowing down. I tend to get to caught up in the beauty in front of me and rush to capture it without stepping back to consider what about the landscape drew me in initially in the first place!
And I think your comment out possession was spot on. Selfishness is not what photography is about.
Comment by ScottTurner — 27 February, 2013 @ 12:50 am