Have you ever wondered what photography is? Often, we are all busy with figuring out the practicalities of it, and we never stop to ask ourselves what the heck it even is. In this article, I will define photography in the simplest way possible.
So, how does one go about defining photography? What is it to you? This is one of the key questions I ask people in their first coaching session. I get a variety of responses: from “I don’t know” to some long-winded essay on art. However, none are clear. Yet, clear thinking translates to clear goals. In my opinion, if one hasn’t defined what they are doing, they can’t progress far.
The Secret Is in the Literal Meaning
To help everyone out, I’ve gone soul-searching for 20 years in the Himalayan mountains and spent day and night as a monk praying to gods of photography. Because that was utterly useless in helping me find the definition of photography, I did the next best thing: asked a smart friend who knew more Greek than I did. Here's what he said:
Photography is simply painting with light.
Although it stems from Greek roots, it shouldn’t sound “Greek” to you. Upon closer inspection, it makes sense. Photo(photos) is for light, and graphy (grafien) is for writing. Because writing sounds unartistic (for me, the opposite is true), replacing it with painting solves that problem.
How Does One Paint With Light?
Painting with light is easy to say, but is it easy to do? No, it isn’t. But learning it can be lots of fun. Explaining how to learn to light in detail can’t be done in less than a book, but the core concept behind it all is easy to convey.
The core concept all photographers must understand is that light is the sole factor that defines how we see the world. That’s it. No light, no picture — no matter the camera, photographer, or anything else. Therefore, one must be very well-versed in understanding this key component of photography.
To give an analogy to painting, your camera is the brush, your understanding of light is your ability to paint an object or a human that looks natural and accurate. Add drama to the light, and suddenly, there is shape; remove it, and everything looks flat. While painters imagine that light, you see it with your own eyes. The next step is intention.
Intention, Light, and More
While photography is definitely painting with light, you must be intentional with your work. Often, what constitutes a snapshot is a photo that shows no intention or thought behind it. The why behind your photography is much more important than the how. Here, I must stress the importance of you. Sometimes, people try to take images and immediately think about what others will think about it. This slows the artistic process down. The way to speed it up is to justify the act of taking the photo to yourself and yourself only. Often, if something resonates with you, it resonates with others as well. Besides, you can’t indoctrinate perceivers of your work to think as you do. That’s the beauty of art and humans as species: there as many opinions about your work as there are people who saw it.
This calls for a revision of the previous definition. On a simple level, photography is painting with light. But on a more sophisticated level:
Photography is an act of individual intentional creation with light.
Closing Thoughts
Seeing photography as something that’s individual to you and combining that with the literal definition can help you become a much more artistic photographer that is considerate of intention. Great art, just like great images, doesn’t come from an occasional click.
The definition of "Photography is painting with light" is unclear to many, especially if they just started and do not have much experience of using a camera and seeing/using the light. Photography is a language of communication. That's it. Once one can understand it, their photography may improve.
I like that you wrote this article, an addressed the definition of photography. And I like that you explained what the literal translation is.
But I think that "painting" or "writing" can be confusing or deceptive, as there isn't actually any painting or writing being done. What is being done is that light is being used to record a scene. But it is not the photographer who does this. It is the gear, the technology, that records the scene. This is very different from painting or writing, which in most cases involves a human doing the painting or the writing.
Very good point.
Good point. Something more like "printing with light" is more appropriate, I think. Printing is more like you describe, with the distance by technology. But I still thing a definition should live on it's own, all that is mentioned here are still dependant on defining "painting" and "printing". "Making a facsimile of perceptible reality in a physical substrate using light" could be something like that, the problem is that it doesn't explain the result of photography, and that's the problem on defining things, using parallel concepts ou dryly describing something, neither will help someone, that doesn't know what any of it is, understand. It's like a picture is worth a 1000 words, or something....
I didn’t hang out with monks, but I have spent some time recently thinking about what photography is for me. It is simply ‘capturing an instant in time.’ Depending on the subject of one’s photography, this may or not work for others. I analyzed my own photos and found that those which energized me the most matched this simple definition (hint: most involve somebody doing something.)
I do like the attempt to embellish the definition by making it more personal to the photographer. However, I feel quite differently from this author. I see so many articles these days that basically say, “screw what others think.” If that helps you feel better and take better photographs, then great. But for me, the “why” of photography is actually all about the reaction the photo will get from others. How will it make them feel, not me. My long version then, ‘capturing an instant in time that brings joy to others.’