From Snapshots to Fine Art

Is photography a fine art? Jerry Whiting discusses this and more in his article below.

Photography is art. While its status as fine art was a debate among the "intelligentsia" and art elite in the not too distant past, you and I both know that it is an art. Period. Hell, it always was an art.

Treat it as such. View the work of others. Study the classics. Look at all forms of art, not just photography. Now go out and look at some more.

Show your work to others. Listen. Especially to those you respect and those who don't necessarily like what you're doing.

Draw, paint, sculpt. Stretch yourself by doing other forms of art.
Photography outside your comfort zone. Take pictures of things you usually don't. Spend a day doing black & white if you shoot color. Do still lifes if you do landscapes, people if you shoot abstracts.

Leave your camera at home when you'd usually take it with you. A lens-free vacation. A family gathering sans camera. A shutter-free holiday party.

Force yourself to "look" and "see" not "crop" and "frame". Give yourself a photographic sabbatical.

Review what you shot last week, last month, last year. Make it different tomorrow no matter how satisfied you are with yesterday.
Millions of pictures are taken every year. Most are for personal use and fall in the category of "snapshots". A small number can be classified as "photographs", rising above the sea of birthday parties, vacations, weddings, and first steps. While the distinction between snapshots and photographs is admittedly subjective and personal, there are some rules of thumb and conclusions we can all agree on.

"Well, point and shoot cameras do snapshots. You need a fancy camera to do serious photography, right?"

Well, it's not so simple. It's not the tool, it's how one uses it. It's analogous to spending $5000 on a stereo and then spend your life playing sh*t music. Likewise, you can have an expensive camera and take lousy photos. And on the other hand, you can fine art with nothing more than a pinhole camera.

At the risk of oversimplification, some general distinctions can be made: snapshots are casual, photographs are formal. A snapshot is pop culture; a photo is art. Specific and personal vs. general and universal.

Snapshots are often people you know, friends and family. They often act to capture already shared experiences. "Look, you know this person." or "See, this is what I did." "You've been here, remember?" Snapshots are the stuff photo albums are made of, the things that get stuck up on the refrigerator door, what gets mailed to grandparents, that which ends up on your desk.

People you already know see your snapshots. On the other hand, photographs are often destined to be seen and enjoyed by strangers, often without you around to show them, to guide and interpret them. Photos need to stand on their own, whereas snapshots are usually self-contained. Abstractions are allowed if not encouraged and rewarded in photographs. There can be a timelessness to a photo that transcends the photographer and the viewer. Perhaps a photo is bigger than a snapshot even if they're the same physical size.

By now, whether you agree with above or not, you can see that the same scene can be the subject of a snapshot or a photograph. In fact, the same picture can be snapshot to some and a photo to others. Both and simultaneously. The real question is can a picture be neither?

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