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12/02/2013 12:43:39 PM · #1
So I'm reading Sontag's book: On Photography, and it's made me curious:

Why are you doing photography? What makes you continue to pick up the camera? What's the motivation behind it; what's driving it?
12/02/2013 12:45:43 PM · #2
Because I can't draw. Well that's part of it. I'm not sure of the rest, but I can't imagine life without my camera.
12/02/2013 12:50:56 PM · #3
Originally posted by vawendy:

Why are you doing photography? What makes you continue to pick up the camera? What's the motivation behind it; what's driving it?

So many questions. Do I need a lawyer? ;-)

Primary: Capture the people and memories in my life.
Secondary: Express myself ARTistically. ...and make a little money on the side. :)

*My motivation is sporadic and requires constantly changing inspiration.
12/02/2013 12:55:58 PM · #4
No idea.
12/02/2013 01:12:13 PM · #5
I used to travel a ton, so it was to document and capture interesting views of the places I would go. Now that I'm married and more sedentary, I have plenty of evidence to suggest I'm only in it to aggravate my wife.
12/02/2013 01:22:05 PM · #6
Therapy. Although cycling is my preferred form of therapy these days.

Mostly I take pictures because I enjoy the process of seeing what happens when I do.
12/02/2013 01:23:54 PM · #7
Originally posted by vawendy:

Why do you all do photography? What makes you continue to pick up the camera? What's the motivation behind it; what's driving it?

I'm looking for order and serenity in what, for me, has been the disordered cacophony of existence. As per Theodore Roethke:

***************

The lost self changes,
Turning toward the sea,
A sea-shape turning around, --
An old man with his feet before the fire,
In robes of green, in garments of adieu.
A man faced with his own immensity
Wakes all the waves, all their loose wandering fire.
The murmur of the absolute, the why
Of being born falls on his naked ears.
His spirit moves like monumental wind
That gentles on a sunny blue plateau.
He is the end of things, the final man.

All finite things reveal infinitude:
The mountain with its singular bright shade
Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,
The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;
Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,
A scent beloved of bees;
Silence of water above a sunken tree :
The pure serene of memory in one man, --
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world.
12/02/2013 01:25:30 PM · #8
Compulsion...
12/02/2013 01:28:09 PM · #9
Originally posted by Melethia:

Mostly I take pictures because I enjoy the process of seeing what happens when I do.


What she said.
12/02/2013 01:30:25 PM · #10
It's the results after shooting. When I look at a magazine, I go "that's what I want to do"... No matter what it is, glamour, scenery, bw street... As cory said, that can't be explained. Photography is an art, and I believe I am an artist. It comes within!
12/02/2013 01:55:55 PM · #11
As per the above two posters. Creating something. I'm not very artistic and photography is the nearest thing I do that's art.
12/02/2013 02:56:36 PM · #12
Because I love to see how things look through half-squinted eyes and a slight haze of whiskey. Because I think the photograph is one of the most miraculous and enduring of all the works of Man. Because our photographs define us so sharply and mercilessly.
12/02/2013 03:01:49 PM · #13
Originally posted by posthumous:

Originally posted by Melethia:

Mostly I take pictures because I enjoy the process of seeing what happens when I do.


What she said.


what they said.
12/02/2013 03:09:35 PM · #14
Originally posted by Cory:

No idea.

I gota go with Cory here.... I have no idea but I've always been drawn to it and the photographs in general - even in film days I could not wait to get the developed prints back a week or two after you put it in - for those with a puzzled look about timing, yes film developing was slower than 1 hour in the dim dark past :-(. I never got the painting thing but I can spend all day at a gallery looking at prints. There is SOMTHING about it......
12/02/2013 03:19:48 PM · #15
I started off doing it as a hobby after getting divorced, turned into an obsession and it was so much fun creating photos. But I decided it should be my job and now most of it is what other people want me to shoot and the exploration process has died off a great deal.
12/02/2013 03:52:10 PM · #16
Originally posted by tnun:

Originally posted by posthumous:

Originally posted by Melethia:

Mostly I take pictures because I enjoy the process of seeing what happens when I do.


What she said.


what they said.


What all of them have said.
12/02/2013 04:53:39 PM · #17
why do you breathe?
12/02/2013 05:00:17 PM · #18
Originally posted by Spork99:

Compulsion...


To expand on this, it's simple, I've had a camera in my hands and used it as a way to relate to the world since I was 11 or 12. I've left it for periods of time, but I ALWAYS see images in my mind and I ALWAYS come back to photography. By now, I just have to accept that it's part of who I am.
12/02/2013 05:11:52 PM · #19
Oh dear...I have no one to agree with yet. I guess I'll sit in the corner for a while and I'll put this one on my watch list.
12/02/2013 05:30:00 PM · #20
I can't take the whales and animals home with me so I have to take pictures!!

12/02/2013 06:02:49 PM · #21
I've never found another hobby as intriguing as photography. No matter how many years go by, no matter how much you advance, there is always room to learn more. That keeps me interested.
12/02/2013 06:37:16 PM · #22
Mostly I agree with Enlightened and TrotterJay.

Like Tracey noted, it's a great way to preserve memories and these days, pics of animals that may not exist for much longer in the future, in the wild. (And let's face it, feeding and keeping a bunch of wild critters costs mucho $$$). As per what Jay said, I can look at a pic and remember where I was and who I was with. Or was I working alone, figuring out how to do a tricky studio shot, and did I succeed.

Also, I was basically the family no-hoper from an early age on. Everything I ever did was scrutinized and criticized, so thus it was the perfect training ground for DPC ;-) Expectations, especially academic, were very high and my own hardwiring is very different from most others, so that made things like grasping certain subjects and getting along with others (esp in the minefield of adolescence) doubly hard. My sibs and I were expected to be hard on ourselves, which hasn't changed and sadly never will, though I try to not be as hard as others as I am on myself.

So basically, I almost HAD to find a way in which I can excel and prove myself by leaving the rest of my more *successful* (have more education, make more $$$, have children, blahblahblah) sibs in the dust. I'm not going to be this generation's super-successful niche novelist, ground broken by an aunt of mine, so I had to find something else. And I always liked taking pics, it was the cost of processing that killed my desire to shoot more.

Looking back I see now that I was waiting for the digital age of photography to happen, and now that it has, I'm all in.

Message edited by author 2013-12-02 18:38:53.
12/02/2013 06:41:14 PM · #23
Originally posted by snaffles:

Looking back I see now that I was waiting for the digital age of photography to happen, and now that it has, I'm all in.

You're not "all in" until you go Canon :-) (Runs for shelter)
12/02/2013 06:51:52 PM · #24
I think my reasons incorporate those of nearly everyone above, but I have to add that I take and process photos because it takes less time than the drawings and paintings which I used to do - so on a purely quantitative basis I am able to express myself more. However, my drawing hand is getting pretty itchy lately and I may have to dive back into that.
12/02/2013 07:19:29 PM · #25
For me, I thought it was for the memories. But I don't take my camera out at birthdays, thanksgiving, Christmas, etc., until my husband reminds me that I should be taking pictures. I figure those things I'll remember.

If I never could show a photo to another human being, I don't know that I'd ever do photography again. I don't do it for myself, I do it to show others. I laughed at Gina's response, because it was so perfect that it was the first response. She said it was because she doesn't draw. I say that all the time. I've always wanted to be able to draw. I suck at it -- big time. Yet I feel like I can create something beautiful and worthwhile with my photography. Something I never could do with drawing or painting.

But more than that -- I want to share what I see. What I love, what fascinates me, what intrigues me. So I want people to see my photographs.

It's like when I go someplace alone and find something fascinating -- I desperately want to have someone to whom to show it. With photography, I can do that. I can share the things that I think are important, beautiful, atrocious, saddening, wonderful, etc. The better I get at it, the more I can connect with the viewer. It's almost more of a performance art. I want to make them feel something. So I'm really not shooting for myself. I've already seen what I wanted to see and done what I wanted to do, now I want to affect someone else with it.

I still have to figure out how to do that. But that's what I'm working on.
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