Photographers

"For half a century, photography has been the 'art form' of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are more satisfactory than others, but where is credit due? To the designer of the camera? To the finger on the button? To the law of averages?"

- Gore Vidal

"Blessed be the inventor of photography! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has 'cast up' in my time -- this art by which even the 'poor' can possess themselves of tolerable of their absent dear ones."

- Jane Welsh Carlyle

I had an art teacher, who I respected (not a word I use much at all) and who had a lot of respect for me. He said that he didn't view photography as art. His reason, as I can best recall it, was that photography was simply recording scences and subjects; the photographer is just recording scenes. Art, on the other other hand, gives us an artist's unique interpretation of the subject.

I would have to agree with his arguement. Artists depict the world in a different way. Photographers see the world in a different way to begin with...one moment and one frame at a time.

Into The Woods, Into My Night

"The impossible it possible tonight."

- The Smashing Pumpkins


One reason, if not the central reason, for making the switch to digital (or selling out as I belief I may have...though still not bowing down to the the almighty Photoshop) was that I wanted to know if what I was doing was that the pictures that I took lived up to my standards of what I believe I was capable of.

Six years into this photography interest and I have to admit that I have never taken a clear, detailed shot of the moon...until a few weeks prior to this post. Back home in Garrett County, where my summer nights were cooler and my night sky clearer, I watched the moon rise over the hills and break through the trees. For the next 30 minutes a shootout between me and the night broke out. There was trial, and error, and trial, and error, and trial...

Finally, I got the settings dead on, the shutter went, and I got the shot I wanted. And after that, the shutter closed and opened, closed and opened, the camera winking at the night sky now that it had warmed up to it.

In this early night shootout I scarcely had the time to notice between shots the adjustments I was making on the camera. I knew I was getting closer and closer to perfect until I had it...

Luckily for this ignorant photographer, my Sony Cybershot allows me to go back and look at the settings for each image.

For the next lunar display, I think I'll wake my film camera from its sleep and and zoom it in on the subject, getting close enough I believe I can reach out and touch it.

The first image you see is titled "No One Knows About The Midsummer Night's Dream." The second one is titled "The Past Does Not Exist."

Photography involves endless discovery in more ways than one, thank God for that.