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DPChallenge Forums >> Photography Discussion >> Why do you think you take pictures ?
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12/14/2005 04:48:29 PM · #1
I have often been asked why I take photographs. In order to answer that fully, I need to go back into my childhood. I remember when I was but a small whelp and was realizing the concept of time, my mother often said to
me 'Steini, don't let time slip away, the sun is on the rise, save yourself the time, don't let time fly away from you'. I was sure that time was a big, beautiful bird, most likely an albatross. Then I started understanding that time passes in various speeds, like the wheel of time. Don't waste time, this was a precious passing of time... Soon I realized
that nothing could stop time and you couldn't reverse time. Well, actually you can with an extraordinary tool; the brain. It can register all memories, both good and bad, mostly good. Amidst these realizations I saw an old man taking photographs of the ocean. I put myself in his shoes, on how to capture the moment and time. I have realized that we don't live in the past, not the future. We live now, and sam time I am able to capture this moment on picture to be preserved forever.



Message edited by author 2005-12-14 16:49:52.
12/14/2005 04:59:45 PM · #2
Hey Thorstein: I just want you to know that appreciate the sentiment you posted here. Now I see the deeper meaning in your image, "Passing time" challenge: image "Time Killer'

We have all seen the hour glass and some of us have waited to watch to the last few grains fold to record a moment passed that will never be relived. You are correct, our life must deal with the present. It is the only thing we really have, because yesterday is no longer ours and tomorrow may never arrive.

Nice to see a pleasant post as it tends to flush out negative vibes. Keep up your nice work.

Message edited by author 2005-12-14 17:03:41.
12/14/2005 05:48:23 PM · #3
A moment in time frozen, all the aspects of that exact instant halted, to show every one a point of view of time and space. I remeber when I was 5 or 6, my parents hung a large landscape picture above the couch, it was a photo from Arches national park taken in 1948. I remeber standing on the couch just looking at that picture, for some reason it just captivated me.
12/14/2005 05:55:45 PM · #4
i need a creative outlet.

there's a lot of space junk floating around in my cranium. if it doesn't get out, it may clog up my brainstem and send me into a coma.
12/14/2005 06:14:16 PM · #5
emotional outlet
12/14/2005 06:16:52 PM · #6
One of the best compliments I've ever gotten on my work was when someone told me that when she looks at my pictures she feels like she's not only seeing what I saw, but how I felt about it. Somewhere in there lies the answer to your question. I need others to see the world as I see it, and it helps me to find beauty in the world around me.
12/14/2005 06:28:14 PM · #7
Originally posted by saintaugust:

i need a creative outlet.

there's a lot of space junk floating around in my cranium. if it doesn't get out, it may clog up my brainstem and send me into a coma.


Oh yes, definitely a creative outlet here. But in reality more than that, I've had a passion for it since i was in my first darkroom with my mom at age 10 or so. I used to draw and write poetry too, but this completes my creative senses in more ways than those could alone.

I also feel your same feelings about time, capturing a moment, a childs face, a butterfly on a perfect flower, a beautiful landscape is an amazing thing.
12/14/2005 07:37:57 PM · #8
I have a few reasons why I think I take pictures. I have a terrible memory, and pictures are the key to my greatest and worst memories. They are the scrapbook or bio of my life. I was also a model when I was a kid, so I was used to cameras around. I think photography is a way to capture a moment in time. If you see something, you may forget it. If you photograph it, you will be brought back to the place and time over and over again, each time you look at the picture!
12/14/2005 07:45:35 PM · #9
Cause I need money? ;o)
12/14/2005 07:46:14 PM · #10
yes, terrible memory is one reason i keep my wife pic in pocket. If i forget her, she will kill me.

Originally posted by mirdonamy:

I have a few reasons why I think I take pictures. I have a terrible memory, and pictures are the key to my greatest and worst memories. They are the scrapbook or bio of my life. I was also a model when I was a kid, so I was used to cameras around. I think photography is a way to capture a moment in time. If you see something, you may forget it. If you photograph it, you will be brought back to the place and time over and over again, each time you look at the picture!
12/14/2005 08:23:18 PM · #11
Why do I take pictures? ... Because they are there!

To quote, in part, US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in a speech he made at Rice University on September 12, 1962:

... But why, some say, take digital photographs? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain. Why, 32 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? (wild applause)

We choose to go to take digital photographs! We choose to take digital photographs in this decade and do the other things, not because they are HARD, but because they are EASY, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that DPChallenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to yield to evil film-based photographers, and one which we intend to win!

... Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, when asked why climb the highest mountain? He said, "Because it is there."

Well, digital photography is there, and we're going to use it, and the Canon and the Nikon digital cameras are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which digital photographers have ever embarked. (More wild applause)

Message edited by author 2005-12-14 20:29:28.
12/14/2005 08:27:46 PM · #12
Originally posted by ragamuffingirl:

One of the best compliments I've ever gotten on my work was when someone told me that when she looks at my pictures she feels like she's not only seeing what I saw, but how I felt about it. Somewhere in there lies the answer to your question. I need others to see the world as I see it, and it helps me to find beauty in the world around me.


That is simply beautiful ragamuffingirl.

Rose
12/14/2005 08:45:29 PM · #13
verymuch a creative outlet ..
day job is such a drag ... but it pays da'bills
12/14/2005 09:00:31 PM · #14
because I love good looking images.

I'm not into the whole 'capture a moment' i mean its true but most of my favorite photographs aren't a 'moment' in time, but rather an aesthetically pleasing, well composed image. Good light, color etc.

Someone once told me my passion really comes through in my images, I guess I just want to consistently convey that.

I can't really explain that well what I love about it, but I love the prospects it holds. I want my job to be working with images, and traveling. I think photography would suit that well, hopefully things work out like that for me eventually.
12/14/2005 09:34:09 PM · #15
It helps me cope with life. After I lost my Dad in May, I didn't pick up the camera much, then I decided that I really needed to start shooting again and it has helped me focus and distract me at the same time.

g
12/14/2005 09:53:59 PM · #16
Paraphrased quote from my friend:

"When the weird shit that happens, sometimes, you're just content to sit and observe people, not get entirely too involved...and then we see photos of the weird shit! you're perfectly happy to watch the weird shit unfold, but you don't let it get away without your two cents, as it were (often, that two cents comes in a camera, but hey)..."
12/14/2005 10:10:32 PM · #17
My mother was a professional photographer. And, just like how I take pictures of my daughter.....


my mother took pictures of me. I love photography. I love photography. I have to be creative in order to breath. I have to be doing something that allows me to put all these ideas in my head in a format where others can see what I see. Photography is also very special to me because it is a bond that I have with my mother that can never be broken. She lives very far away from me. One way that we communicate is through photography. Her passion for photography has gone, but she encourages me constantly. Pictures can say a thousand words. I want to take pictures that tell stories. I have this fierce desire to get better and better.
12/14/2005 10:19:52 PM · #18
I'd love to take more pictures of my son (affectionately known as Spawn) and my little brother (Brother Beast), but they both have this tendency to make faces, stick up their middle fingers, etc whenever a camera is pointed at them. Yes, they're both teenagers.
12/14/2005 10:31:25 PM · #19
I don't know to be honest. I have always had an interest and bought an SLR not long after I started working. It's most been this year with the swap to digital that I have had more interest.
12/14/2005 10:31:54 PM · #20
I’ve always had an artistic flair. Before my first digital camera I had several cheap film cameras, one camera ate a couple rolls, my dog at about a year old ate 5 rolls ( i did manage to save 2 of them ) and while moving I found 8 rolls stashed around the house, which I still haven’t developed. When we moved my presents to myself were a digital camera and a laptop, and suddenly my creative passion has an outlet. That’s how I started down my path but as to why I take pictures, I take pictures because I have to (or need to, depending). At first it was just that I wanted to show what I saw to the world, to capture the life of my family. Now it’s a passion, I see the world and I have to capture it. I see beauty in so much; even the un-beautiful to me has something that I’m drawn to and need to capture. I take pictures for myself, for my need, and if I can take a picture that allows others to see and understand it’s an amazing feeling. One evening I saw an incredible sunset coming and I had to go out. Really I HAD to, it was a compulsive and physical feeling of need inside my soul, to capture such that sight, that moment, the feeling I had while looking at it. It ended up being my free study entry and my highest scoring challenge. That, in a field of incredible photographs, I managed to let others see what I saw that evening. As I said, I take pictures because I have and need to. It completes me...
12/14/2005 10:49:31 PM · #21
I take pictures because I cannot always believe what I see.
12/14/2005 10:58:22 PM · #22
Photographs are my proof and evidence...I want to remember the everyday "little" things of my life...the way my cat sleeps in the sun, the torn screen on my back door...the way the sun danced on that one chrome bumper in late august...I am afraid of forgetting.
12/14/2005 11:17:32 PM · #23
I just like seeing people naked... no, well yeah, but I've always enjoyed photography, loved doing photojournalism (the perks were awesome). But, I can't say I don't like the fact that I get paid to do it.
12/14/2005 11:53:35 PM · #24
When I was three years old, my father started accompanying silent films on the pipe organ at an old movie palace in San Francisco. For years, every Friday and Saturday night, we'd go and see two old silent or b&w films. To this day, I see beauty in contrasty black and white images (which probably explains a lot about my own work...). This is also where my three passions came from--movies (or images, in a broader sense), music, and reading (all those silent movie titles).

On top of this, my father was also a photographer (amature, but good). We had a darkroom in our garage and he showed me the ropes at an early age. I was much more immersed in music at the time (my parents' choice), but now these forces seem to come to have come to a head and music has fallen to photography.

I love photography. I love the beauty in an image, just waiting to be discovered. I am passionate about the richness and depth of b&w. Most of all, I love the way photography allows me to think and see differently, to experience life in a slightly off, much more magical, way. I get to see the beauty in all things, even garbage. And this is a gift. Now if only my ability to execute what I see in my head would develop into a gift as well! : )

Cheers,
Jeannel
12/15/2005 12:06:04 AM · #25
Math? forget it. I live in a visual world, always have. I have taken pictures since I was very young. got confused in High School and tried to be cool, tried commercial art in college, got a degree I still use it but all along I have taken pictres. When I was down I would take them and had a real hard time waiting one hour for them to be ready. I'd spend my last 5 bucks to develop a roll. Somewhere I discovered peopel would give me money for them so now I take them for a living but I also still take them for fun. I "see" pictures most of the time I'm outside. Never had the patience for studio stuff. Catching a fragment of action is my favorite. It's more of a need than anything...glad I can earn a living at it and kill two birds with one stone.
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