What photography means to me
Today I was visiting the National Media Museum with a friend and we decided to make a trip around the photography exhibition. Part of the exhibition was audio visual and part was photography and what struck me was the lack of photography in the photographs.
For me photography has always meant drawing with light (from the Greek phos (meaning light) and graphis (meaning stylus or paintbrush) and although the photographs exhibited were full of concept and semiotics they lacked in photography as I know it. The art of using light to paint a picture is poles apart from simply pointing and shooting.
Last Sunday I shot family photos for a client and old friend. Upon seeing the photographs of their young children the father confessed that there was a world of difference between photographs and photography and when pressed for an explanation told me that any one with a good camera can take a photograph but what I had created for them was completely different. It was a wonderful sentiment that made me stop and think about what photography means to me.
When I hold a training day for eager photographers I say that once you learn to see light as a photographer the world is forever changed. From small things such as observing in a casual conversation how light is striking my friends face, and knowing instantly how to modify it, to seeing a space in the world and seeing the quality of light that is in that space, even before we have arrived at that space. Sometimes that space is a corridor or break in a forest other times it can be that the light has changed all around us with a subtle movement of a cloud or the setting of the sun.
Apart from the art of my profession, photography for me is a social interaction. A perfect blend of entertainment, hospitality and psychology. I love being able to talk, play and explore with people to relax and unlock the social barriers and get photographs that people relate to and empathise with. From the self concious 6 year old girl who thinks she must do as she is told (until she realises she doesn’t) in the photos through to the at first moody teenage boy who opens up when we discover a shared interest in science every one is different and everyone has a story.
No two days are the same…there is always different light and there is always different people which makes me realise that my original career choice to be an optician was working with the right elements of people and light only the wrong mix.
And so to answer my question: photography, for me, is the right mix of light and people.
