Why do you take photos?
In theme with our recent posts about what makes a photograph controversial, and what photography is in the first place, my Canadian friend Cory Johnson shares some thoughts about why he takes photos…
When we see an image, what moves us? Why do we feel what we do?
Trying to analyze that is opening a whole Pandora’s box of issues.
Photographers are visual artists. We “see” things just a little bit differerently. Why we see differently, and how we see, well, who knows….. We have our own “personal filters” as it were :)
I take photos because photos are nothing but a frozen moment, an impression, in time. And life itself is just an endless collection of moments and impressions.
Each of these moments leaves us with an impression. From impressions arise a myriad of thoughts. Some thoughts you like, some you may not like. Some you choose to remember, while other thoughts fall into the black hole of the mind, to be forgotten forever, dissolving into the void. Or do they?
Why do we remember the thoughts we do? What attracts us to that impression? What attracts us to that image? What of that image? Is it beautiful? Tasteful? Does it fill you with joy? Happiness? Or do you find it repulsive? What do you consider ugly? How do you define beauty? Can something so ugly and repulsive be beautiful?
There is a beauty in everything we see and interact with. But if something repulses you, then why? It only reflects something in you. Take a look, see for yourself. Or do you find the same image lovely and beautful? If so, then why? Something in you reflects that as well. But how often do we remember those impressions? Not as often as we should. If something is ugly, we should remember that, too.
Define beauty. Define ugly. Because really, in the end, everything just is. It is us who attaches an impression of that moment to our existence. The moment itself does not know anything about being beautiful or ugly. It just is. Therefore you can find a moment beautiful and ugly simultaneously.
We interact with that moment and leave our impression on it. Who else remembers that moment? Is their impression the same? The moment itself just was. It did not know what to be. But we leave our impression on that moment, that image, which carries on into the ethers of space and time.
I see order and I see chaos simultaneously.
I see ugly and beauty simultaneously.
I find those moments awesome – “full of awe”.
Contributed by Cory Johnson, of Vancouver’s Max Photography.
As a ‘food for thought’ item – why do you take photos? Tell us in the comments of this post!
My day job, if it can be called that, is being a writer. I've got one book out there so far and it's awesome, so go ahead and buy a copy! It's available from 
In front of you, five hyperactive men with guitars, drums, and microphones. Behind you, five thousand fans. In your hands, a camera... You're going to need more than just a little bit of good luck to pull this one off. That's where this book comes in.
Take a Canon EOS 450D. Attach a Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens. Hit the streets of London. See what happens.
Insights, suggestions and comments
It’s a compulsion, addiction, obsession, a desire to create, explore, learn, bang my head against a wall in frustration. Its the satisfaction in knowing that you just took a good photo* and not having the faintest idea on how you managed it and wanting to do it again many times over.
*and it doesn’t require anyone else to validate the feeling. The image feels right and doesn’t need an explanation as to why “it works”
*takes a deep breath*
It (sometimes) allows me to express ideas that don’t/can’t exist in the real world, it satisfies my creative streak. It doesn’t have to involve people but it can when I crave human interaction.
Otherwise, I’m not sure why (but have been thinking a lot about why I do it in the last several months) I still carry a camera around and take pictures.
Why do I take photos?
They say seeing is believing. I do not think that photograph is a frozen moment, not at all. It is alive, shivering and sometimes simply kicking moment of a reality, BUT only in a hands or at least while seen by the human mind. So I think photographs are constructs of the reality, hence the name of my site. They put you or rather allow you to put yourself in a trance, or in disgust or in awe. In different mental and emotional states, help you to expose your feelings before your own conciousness. This is why I take photos, to explore myself to understand who I am.
I am primarily a writer. I write about my experiences, and usually from a humorous standpoint. But my experiences really aren’t all that different from anyone else’s, I just have a different way of interpreting them and repeating them back later on; sometimes with embellishments and slight twists and turns that actually were never there, although the basis of the story remains true. You know, the things that *should* have happened, the way someone *should* have responded to make the story more interesting or amusing or whatever.
Photography to me is just another way of telling a story – the challenge is in finding a way to tell it that makes it interesting. It can be funny, sad, ironic, in-your-face confrontational, it can work for social justice or it can just reflect quietly on the human condition, and so on.
The photographer’s scene is spread before him or her. The challenge is in how to tell the story in such a way that the audience will appreciate it. This to me is much more difficult than writing, the means and methods may be understood, but the mode is less transparent and more easily misunderstood or lost in translation – like telling a joke in a language you don’t understand.
In many ways, a photograph to me is like haiku – a poetry form that has strict rules. With a story or a traditional poem, one may fit the form to the subject. With haiku, one must fit the subject to the form.
In seventeen syllables, one must say what one intends to say, communicate what must be said, and make it understandable by the intended audience. When the music stops, everyone sits down, nes pas?
Thus, the photograph is to me the ultimate test of the ability of the artist to communicate. The artist must clearly understand what they wish to say, must discover the mode (metaphor or language) of saying that within the means and methods at their disposal (the tools they have mastered, the scene they have before them), and they must present the finished haiku to be interpreted, judged, and perhaps appreciated.
If I ever master this bloody business, I hope to be able to produce a photograph that shouts “Who is John Galt?”
photograpy is beautiful
I take pictures because only this way I can get the world of my vision of my dream. Through the photo I can get something that I’ve never had, that I’d dream about. This is the reason of somthing burning inside me and screeming to get more shots!
Why do I photograph?
Taking pictures of subjects I am intrigued with makes me feel good. I love the combination of science & art. Photographs allow me to share my experiences and explorations with others. Photography gives me an excuse to explore and has enabled me to travel and see things that most others do not. I seek out natures’ awesome beauty from the milky way to photographing microscopic life in a pond. How many people have a seen a single celled vorticella let alone know what it is and where it lives. How many have experienced close encounters with Grizzly bears, wolves, caribou or a Great Gray Owl flying in a snowstorm. These are the encounters I try to capture with my camera. Taking pictures requires technical skill for sure, but even more important it takes a sense of design and the ability to see and imagine. A picture can take a fraction of a second but it can take days, months or years of preparation to be in the right place to take that picture. These are just a few of the things that attract me to photography.
I have been photographing for more then 35 years now and I love it even more today then when I started. About 15 years ago I became a professional nature photographer and vowed I would primarily photograph things that mattered to me and so far I have been lucky to do so.
I believe that life is a miracle – and 15 years of research as a cell biologist has convinced me of that. I am not religious – but being out in nature, hiking in the mountains, walking through a ancient rainforest, or kayaking in close proximity to killer whales gives me such an awesome feeling that I am compelled to try and capture those moments to share them with others and remind me of how lucky I have been to experience it.
A camera can be a magnifying glass for the mind – it can allow us to see things we would otherwise miss – though its important to sometimes put the camera down and just watch and experience the moment. A photograph does not replace or become more important then the experience as Susan Sontag suggests in her book “On Photography”, but rather it serves as a form of memory that is better then my own. Photography is challenging because in order for out photos to speak or communicate with others we must understand what it is we want to show or say and then how to execute it. A good photograph can compel me to visit a location or fight for its preservation. Photography lets me slow down and live in the moment without the fear of falling off the top of a mountain.
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