The Weight Photography Holds
2 January 2023
Photography is an excellent, timeless and fascinating subject to talk about, so I guess that's what this newsletter is going to be about.
I think that a camera is something that everyone should have. These high quality devices to capture the memories we hold dear the most.
Yet… at the same time, photography has become simplified, I guess. I have been thinking about just how many photos we see in a day now. Shared to us online, taken by ourselves and shown to us through our social media feeds. That seems to devalue just how valuable a single picture can be.
How do you recapture the magic of having your own photo? I suppose it’s similar to recapturing the magic of physical books over reading on your phone, or listening to a vinyl record over listening to Spotify. One is more convenient, but one is much more… real, I suppose. Maybe recapturing the magic of taking a picture is to go back into the past, when pictures were taken on big bulky cameras that printed out the picture, and you’d have to wait 15 minutes for it to print itself out.
Yet, photographers still exist even today. They don’t use these bulky cameras, they use DSLRs or even a high-end smartphone. They take stunning pictures and don’t seem to have this problem of losing the magic, because their passion radiates out of the photos they take. Are we just uneducated, in our arts? Or is there something more to it that lays unseen? A good photo can’t be taken just through technical knowledge either. It requires an eye, that’s trained to see, to really take in the world around it. It’s an art, and all art tells a story. So what truly makes a good photo?
A good photo might just be one that helps you think. Like a painting does, a photo is about taking a piece of the world and emphasizing it with your eye and practice, pointing out what stands out from the mundane as well as making the mundane stand out.
In short, I’d like to learn more, if not about photography… but what makes photography tick. It’s a vast and broad subject and there are many branches and fields. Selfies stay at the bottom, anyone can take them… but what separates the amateurs from the pros?
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