What is the point of photography?

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Byker28i said:
Think of some of the most famous photos. Would these be entertainment?

Wrong word I think, to look back on something would mean we were documenting something for probably sharing later.

This isn't entertaining. There's nothing about entertainment with war photography, or documenting tragedies. James natchway, I have been a witness and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotton and must not be repeated
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You raise a very good point. But why would anyone want to look at documentation images? I just googled what entertainment means and it's something we enjoy. But if we don't need to do something why do we do it. Curiosity? But doesn't that then mean that you are interested in that subject? And if you are interested in it isn't it then entertaining you?
 
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droj said:
That's a snapshooter talking ....
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There is frequently more 'artistic merit', by way of prompting a emotive response and communicating a feeling, in a 'snapshot' than there is in an awful lot of 'art' photography.

When I look at a 'Snap-shot' of my grandmother? My daughter when she was a baby? my mother when she was younger? So many 'snap-shots', I have a connection to the subject, I am involved with the photography, and it stimulates far more of an emotive response in ME, than when I look at yet anther romantic portrayal of a rock on the beach, or a cottage in the country, or or or whatever... no matter how beautiful they may be, no matter how inspired the photographer..

Show me a stranger's 'snap-shots', in which I have no connection with the subject? Still, frequently there is a purity, an honesty a lack of pretension, and in the 'snap-shot' a revelation of a non artificial alternative reality to which I am not a part, that stimulates a more profound emotional response than yet another, frequently pretentious, contrived, and significantly un-engaging 'art' photo that usually fails to do any more, then simply be aesthetically innocuous.. "oh, that's 'nice'" and onto the next bit of visual grazing...

The 'Snap-Shot', is to my mind, probably the most emotive application of photography, and where the medium's strength is greatest.. and yet so derogated by so may 'serious' photographers, where it probably ought to be embraced, venerated and promoted.

The purpose of photography is to make photo's; the purpose of photo's is to be looked at; Few go trawling through flikr to look at pleasant portrayals of waterfalls and sunsets; but, many do pester their mates on face-book every week-end for the 'Snap-Shots' from last nights party.... which begs the suggestion, that the candid, the snap-shot, as a genre, probably has more 'purpose' than art-photography.. I certainly think so..
 
Ed Sutton said:
All photographs are documentary to some degree.
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To all degrees as it reveals about the subject(s)
and /or the photographer him/herself
 
Raptor Mike said:
You raise a very good point. But why would anyone want to look at documentation images? I just googled what entertainment means and it's something we enjoy. But if we don't need to do something why do we do it. Curiosity? But doesn't that then mean that you are interested in that subject? And if you are interested in it isn't it then entertaining you?
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News, editorial, all sorts of a reasons such as education, knowledge, to inform, rather than to entertain.
 
Snapshots are still considered images, they were taken for a reason, to document a place, a person, an event. Same as many of the selfies, it's just they have meaning for a very select few rather than the many
 
Just read this - an example of documentary images not for entertainment

http://issuu.com/foto8/docs/issue23
Page 132 - Imaging war, Whilst working as a doctor in a war zone, photographers have captured images of the patient’s wounds and their subsequent operations. Kaplan realised that the images could be of use to medical students who were training for work on the front line, so not exposing other doctors to the risks yet allowing them the experiences. Forget if the images aren't good enough then you're not close enough.
An interesting article afterwards by Max Houghton of the graphic images taken and the decisions taken by picture editors. Note there is a graphic image on page 134
 
Because I can't pain a picture in 1/200th sec
 
For some people it is a job
for others a passtime
for me it has been both.
Though I never know what to do with Photographs, when I am done with them.
At least with digital you produce less environmental waste.
 
What is the point in breathing? What is the point of your life? In the grand scheme of things all things we do are pointless. Even the actions Barak Obama takes on a daily basis are pointless in the grand scheme of the universe.

“You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”
 
crofter said:
At the end of the day everything is fairly pointless,some people think too much.
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I always dismiss this; people are simply thinking about things, that you are not. There are plenty of people that appear to get through life without thinking much, but they obviously have some kind of pillow to fall back on when things they didn't think about smack them in the face. Photography is like many things and gives some people something to think about other than the daily chores of earning money to survive and all the other chores of the day. I often why I have set myself my current photography challenge, but even though I can see the standard do my pictures is way below others on the forum, while I'm going through them it's reminding me what a good week I had last week and distracting me from the crap weather outside now and the return to work tomorrow.
 
PhotographyBuff said:
Moroever, painting allows one a freer hand in transforming reality according to one's wish. Photography must start from a basic given.
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So does Photoshop :D

Anyway, there are a number of points to photography and for everyone this may be different. For me there are 2 reasons:
  1. Documentary- to record an event or moment in time to reflect back to later
  2. As a creative outlet, as has been said by others I too cannot draw, however photography gives me the freedom to experiment with different techniques, styles, lighting etc to portray an image that I find pleasing to the eye
Simples :D
 
There are many 'points' to photography, depending on the outlook of the viewer and the intention of the photographer.

But to suggest that somehow painting is automatically worthy and photography isn't is about as naive as an opinion gets. In my life I've painted thousands of images (all before I was 20) and none of them are worth anything to anyone other than me. However I've since shot thousands of images that are treasured possessions by many families.

But both of those facts are borderline insignificant in the grand scheme of things, being a tiny snapshot of the many merits of both photography and painting.
 
jojo90 said:
What is the point in breathing? What is the point of your life? In the grand scheme of things all things we do are pointless. Even the actions Barak Obama takes on a daily basis are pointless in the grand scheme of the universe.

“You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”
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Yet here you are quoting from a movie - Fight Club - from a a creative production team - the writers, film crew, editors, so many creative people involved in that process to create 139 minutes of entertainment so you could quote a line from that film. 84 actors, a huge crew: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast

Someone wrote that line for you to quote - you didn't, it wasn't one of your creative processes, so someone made a difference in your life, influenced you. You might not know who that was, but they did. Perhaps that's one of the things that defines us as human, different to animals, the ability to make a difference in someones life (not always to the good).
 
Andre Bazin, The Ontology of the Photographic image – What is Cinema? 1945 p.7
“For the first time, between the originating object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of a non living agent. For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man… in spite of any objections our critical spirit may offer, we are forced to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced, actually, re-presented…”
Bazin wrote this before the days of easy digital manipulation although manipulation within the dark room was still prevalent and an accepted part of producing a print.

Allan Sekula, On the Invention of Photographic Meaning, 1997, p.454
“If we accept the fundamental premise that information is the outcome of a culturally determined relationship, then we can no longer ascribe an intrinsic or universal meaning to the photographic image.”
So Sekula in his article discusses the image as a means of exchanging information, engaging both the photographer and viewer, he talks about how our cultural differences affect the image both produced and read,


Berger's In Ways of Telling in said:
A drawing or painting is a translation. That is to say each mark on the paper is consciously related, not only to the real or imagined "model", but also to every mark and space already set out on the paper.
Thus a drawn or painted image is woven together by the energy (or the lassitude, when the drawing is weak) of countless judgements. Every time a figuration is evoked in a drawing, everything about it has been mediated by consciousness, either intuitively or systematically. In a drawing an apple is made round and spherical; in a photograph, the roundness and the light and shade of the apple are received as a given.

This difference between making and receiving also implies a very different relation to time. A drawing contains the time of its own making, and this means that it possesses its own time, independent of the living time of what it portrays. The photograph, by contrast, receives almost instantaneously - usually today at a speed which cannot be perceived by the human eye.
The only time contained in a photograph is the isolated instant of what it shows.

There is another important difference within the times contained by the two kinds of images. The time which exists within a drawing is not uniform. The, artist gives more time to what she or he considers important. A face is 'likely to contain more time than the sky above it. Time in a drawing accrues according to human value. In a photograph time is uniform: every part of the image has been subjected to a chemical process of uniform duration. In the process of revelation all parts were equal.

So the photographer decides on the instant that he takes the image. At the time of taking that is a recorded image, that instant of time, but the painter provides a translation through what he sees, onto the image. He provides his own interpretation of the scene and the time taken to produce the image is significantly more.

André Bazin’s quote as above suggests that he is arguing that the camera is just an instrument and what is taken as the image is a true representation, For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man and the instrumentality of a non living agent, creating credence that the object existed and wasn't simply created in the mind of the artist.

He does quantify this by saying The personality of the photographer enters into the proceedings only in his selection of the object to be photographed and by way of the purpose he has in mind. Although the final result may reflect something of his personality, this does not play the same role as is played by that of the painter.

Now I don't agree with this, the photographer has ways to change the image as he takes it, but this does explain the difference between painting and photography

 
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