I have been taking photographs for most of my life. I started out when I was in junior school with a small 110 film camera when I was eight or nine years old back in the 80’s, and I have been taking pictures on and off ever since. Even now I’m still shooting photos every week, whether that is shots of family life, days out, or something deliberate and creative.
In this article I want to explore why I personally take photographs. This might seem like a strange question to ask when billions of images are taken every day around the world, showing how much people value photography in their lives. Hopefully it can give you an insight into my thought processes and help you consider why you take photos as well.
What Do I Call Photography?
Photography is so embedded in society today that everyone reaches for their phone as soon as anything unusual happens, they see something they like, or find something they want to remember. I am one of those people too, but when I talk about photography I’m not talking about snapshots of a book I want to remember, or where I parked my car. By photography I mean taking a photo that I have composed, considered, and which may have a message or meaning that I’m trying to convey. This could be any type of photography from a nice photo of my kids to a still life I have set up in my house, I don’t care if it was taken on my mirrorless camera, smartphone, or on film so long as it is more than a simple snapshot.
Why Take Photos?
I expect there are as many reasons to take photos as there are photographers, and for me there are different reasons behind every type of shot that I might take. Photography has several functions in my life including documenting what is important to me, providing a creative outlet, and giving me a reason to play with cameras!
Documenting What is Important
or me photos are second to none for capturing the world around us in a way that is relatively easy to store and to go back and look at in future. A photo captures a split second and stores it forever, either in chemical or digital form, saving that moment so anyone can see what the world was like when it was taken, whether this is you or future generations. I would like to think that when I’m no longer here (and even hopefully when I am) that my photos can recall good memories of years gone by or give insight into the world as it was. Whether this is just for my wife and I to look back on baby photos of my boys, or if it is some of my local or travel photos that captured a glimpse of a world that has changed. Videos are great as well but for me they feel like they have less longevity, especially videos from the early days with forever changing codecs and mediums. A video recorded on a tape format could easily be lost and is not simple to view; you can’t print out a video and keep it in a box in the attic for your grandchildren to find.
This kind of photo to capture the world does not necessarily need to be very creative, a basic understanding of composition and technical competence with your camera can allow you to capture amazing memories that you will love looking back on in years to come. Of course there is nothing to stop you setting up portrait sessions with your family, in fact it is something I do every year but that is an article for another day! Bearing in mind why I take these memory or documentary photos I do try to moderate the amount I take. I find that if I take too many I just don’t have the time, energy, or motivation to go through them all and pick out my best shots, then share them with family members or print them out. When this happens they end up just sitting on a hard drive somewhere possibly never to be seen again.
Some critics of photography once described it as something intrusive, as a way to claim ownership over a moment. My view is the opposite. When you take a photo you aren’t taking something from the world but paying more attention to it and giving that moment to the people you care about even if they were not there. To me that makes a photograph precious, and something that will be cherished when today is a distant memory.
A Creative Outlet
I work in a corporate role in the telecoms world and this doesn’t always scratch my creative itch so my second reason for taking photographs is to give myself a creative outlet, making something and improving my knowledge and skills on a subject that is not work related. Like most people I go through phases where one hobby takes over from another for a while, it has been like this for me with photography over the years, but it is something that has stayed with me throughout almost my entire life so far. The first photos I can find in my library were shots of my classmates back in those early school days. I took photos on film all through my school years, printed my own pictures in the darkroom, and even set up a darkroom at home at one point. Now I have moved primarily to digital and while I don’t need to learn how to mix up chemicals anymore there is always something new to learn. Lighting, composition, staging a scene, posing people, capturing street scenes, editing photos, managing photo storage, printing, the list goes on and on!
A benefit to photography as a hobby is that there is no such thing as the perfect photo, and so photography is not something you can ever really finish. No matter how good or experienced you are there is always something to improve on if you have the desire to learn, and even without active learning your compositional intuition and tastes will develop over time just by taking and looking at your own photos and those of others. I often find that photos I took 5 years ago look terrible to me now as my skills and tastes have changed so much. You have to take this as a positive, if you look back on a photo you took 20 years ago and think it was the best shot you ever took then that doesn’t say much about your development in the meantime!
I take part in a weekly photo challenge where they provide a theme and you have 1 week to shoot a photo on that theme. This keeps me picking up my camera every week and provides an impetus to improve my skills in many different areas. There are no prizes, no medals, this is just photography for me. I sometimes share them with a small group of friends, but that is not the main point. We can photograph entirely for ourselves and still find limitations to our capabilities that can be improved, for example, I can do some editing but compared to the experts I am a complete novice, yet the person who is an expert at editing might not know how to work with flashes; there is always something to learn and improve.
If you are looking for your own creative outlet then one major advantage of photography today is that it is so accessible. If photography didn’t exist how many of the people taking photos today would be learning oil painting techniques to make portraits of their friends and family? Before photography came along many people would pass their lives without once having a portrait made of them as that was exclusively for the upper echelons of society. Today anyone can take a photo and record any part of their life. Photography can give anyone acceptable results from day 1 with minimal training, then with some basic understanding of composition they can elevate their shots to the point where they are proud of them. Once you start to enjoy your photos then before you know it you will be carrying your camera everywhere and looking for the Decisive Moment!
Objet d’Art
I don’t just enjoy photographs, I enjoy the cameras themselves. Mechanical shutters, film advance levers, the precision of lenses, and now the flexibility of digital sensors and editing. Photography lets me engage with both art and engineering at the same time, which is quite rare in a hobby.
You have to admit it, some cameras and lenses are just beautiful bits of technology. Whether we are talking about a 50-year-old rangefinder from the USSR , a twin lens reflex, or the latest mirrorless from Sony or Fuji, there is something to be said for the joy in owning and using such precision instruments.
While I enjoy the artistic side of taking photographs I also enjoy the technical side including learning about, fixing, and using cameras and lenses. I have more cameras than I care to admit to, so many that my young son told me I’m not allowed to buy any more!
I enjoy just about anything optical including cameras, telescopes, and microscopes. The mechanical and physical nature of older cameras and film fascinates me, how they work to capture a scene using physics and chemistry. These days I don’t do any darkroom work but there was a special joy in seeing an image appear in the developer tray. The closest most people might get today is watching a Fuji Instax photo appear; and I have both a Polaroid camera and an Instax printer precisely because I enjoy the process and analog nature of them.
Of course not everyone will share my appreciation for cameras as objects, maybe treating a camera as purely a tool, but for me the two aspects complement each other and keep me coming back to take photos and to experiment with new cameras, lenses, and films alongside my digital photography.
Why Do I Still Take Photographs Today?
I’m not a famous photographer working to get my pictures on the front cover of a magazine (although I wouldn’t complain if that happened), and I’m not an influencer with millions of followers. So why do I still take photographs if most people will never see them? The simple answer is that I enjoy it. I enjoy the cameras and lenses, I enjoy improving my skills, I enjoy photographing my family, and I enjoy having a creative outlet that stays with me wherever I go. Everyone has their own reasons for picking up a camera, and none of them are wrong. These are mine.
What is it that drives you to pick up yours?