Why do people photograph?  For money, for fun, to get likes?  Everyone has their own reasons for picking up a camera and capturing the world around them. I wanted to share some of the reasons that I photograph and hopefully it will inspire others to pick up a camera and start their own journey in photography.  There is a book by Robert Adams called Why People Photograph, as you may be able to tell, that is where I got the inspiration to write this and expand the discussion a little bit more.

For a long time and quite frankly still to this day sometimes I’m thinking to myself “This shot will get a lot of likes on Instagram” and to a certain extent that makes me really dislike photography.  I feel a deep shame that I’m not always taking photographs for art rather than for likes.  

It’s unfortunate that in modern society you have to figure out the ‘algorithms’ and how to get the most amount of likes or views before you have to figure out how to actually create a nice piece of art.  If you have taken a beautiful picture and you want to share it to the world it might not get seen by many people if you haven’t carefully figured out what subject is currently in the zeitgeist or what time of day to post that picture so it gets seen by the most amount of people.  Having to worry about these things is one of the reasons I sometimes fall out of love with photography, or at the very least it makes me not want to share my photographs.  I want to share my photographs with people, I want people to see my work but If my photographs aren’t going to be seen by many people because I posted it at the wrong time of day or I used the wrong hashtag then what’s the point?

I think that brings us back to the title of the piece.  Why People Photograph?  Do I take photographs to please the algorithm, do I take photographs for the love of taking photographs, do I do it to try and become a well known photographer whose name is spoken of in future generations?  

It seems like as the world changes and as I grow older the reason I go out and take photographs changes as well.  When I was younger I would take photographs because I loved to create, as I got older it started to become something I would do to try and either make money or get my work seen by as many people as possible.  Now, I still do try and make money out of my photographs, I do still try to get my photographs seen by as many people as possible but my main reason for taking photographs these days is I love to create and I want my photographs to portray a sense of emotion.  In a sense I have come full circle and of course as I have grown and matured I understand the need to make money but for right now the reason I take photographs is because I want to create art.  Maybe that means that I have to work a job unrelated to anything artistic but at the end of the day, as long as I am still able to get a camera in my hands and take a photograph then I will be happy.

Photography like many other art forms is about feeling. Whether it’s photography, painting, music, dance or any other art form. Creating art is about feeling.  

When I first watched the Scottish Ballet perform The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky I was captivated by the beautiful but chaotic dance.  When I see a Banksy sprawled on a wall depicting the corruption of corporations I feel a sense of anarchism and activism.  When I saw Robert Adams Burning Oil Sludge for the first time I was blown away by the beauty of the piece.  The toxic smoke billowing into the air portraying a sense of despair to everything around it.

All of this to say that art, that photography to me is all about feelings and emotions and I take photographs to bring joy into my life and to elicit a sense of emotions from whoever may see my photographs.