What is the reason people so get into photography

Photography is a combination of visual imagination and design, craft skills, and practical organizing ability. Why do you want to take photographs? What is actually involved? What roles do photographs play, relative to other ways of making pictures or expressing information and ideas? And what makes a result good or bad anyway?

One of the first attractions of photography for many people is the lure of the equipment itself. All that ingenious modern technology designed to lit hand and eye. There is great appeal in pressing buttons, clicking precision components into place, and collecting and wearing cameras. Tools are vital, of course, and detailed knowledge about them absorbing and important, hut don't end up shooting photographs just to test out the machinery.

Another attractive reason is the actual process of photography. The challenge of care and control, and the way this is rewarded by technical excellence and a final object you produced yourself. Results can be judged and enjoyed for their own intrinsic photographic 'qualities', such as superb detail, rich tones and colours. The process gives you the means of 'capturing your seeing', making pictures from things around you without having to laboriously draw. The camera is a kind of time machine, which freezes any person. place or situation you choose. It seems to give the user power and purpose.

Apart from these is enjoyment of the visual structuring of photographs. There is real pleasure to he had from designing pictures as such. The 'geometry' of lines and shapes, balance of tone, the cropping and framing of scenes, whatever the subject content actually happens to be. So much can be done by a quick change of viewpoint, or choice of a different moment in time.

Perhaps you are drawn into photography mainly because it is a quick, convenient and seemingly truthful way of recording something. All the importance lies in the subject itself, and you want to show objectively what it is, or what is going on. Photography is evidence, identification, a kind of diagram of a happening. The camera is your visual notebook.

Another reason for taking up photography is that you want a means of personal self-expression. It seems odd that something so apparently objective as photography can be used to express, say, issues of identity, or metaphor and mysticism, describing daydreams that may not be immediately apparent from the subject matter in front of the camera. But we have probably all seen images 'in' other things. like reading meanings into flickering flames, shadows or peeling paint.

These are only some of the diverse activities and interests covered by the umbrella term 'photography'. None are 'better' or more important than others. Several will be blended together in the work of a photographer. or any one market for professional photography. Your present enjoyment in producing pictures may be mainly based on technology, art or communication. And what begins as one area of interest can easily develop into another. As a beginner it is helpful to keep an open mind. Provide yourself with a well-rounded 'foundation course' by trying to learn something of all these facets, preferably through practice rather than theory alone.

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