PHOTOGRAPHY - What It Is!

Probably, if you asked one hundred photographers what photography means to them you would get a large number of different answers. Maybe even a hundred answers. In the following paragraph, I will briefly give you mine. Frankly, I have taken pictures of nearly everything imaginable over the last 50 years. Included are weddings, graduation ceremonies for major colleges and universities, commercial trade shows, the Vice-President of the United States (Dick Cheney), the Governor of Missouri and later Attorney General of the United States (John Ashcroft), automobile accident scenes, portrait packages for churches, wildlife, landscapes, tourism, sporting events, etc., etc.

By my definition, photographers DO NOT TAKE PICTURES. Rather, photographers capture a moment of time that expresses itself to the viewer. Expressions of beauty, horror, terror, sensitivity, love, kindness, power, fury, anger, violence, tragedy, peace, tranquility, are only some of the emotional responses that properly captured images create in the mind and heart of the viewer. Simply stated, a photographer moves people emotionally with his/her work! The better the photographer, the more powerful the emotional response.