Introduction

The word “photography” comes from two Greek roots, φωτός (phōtos) and γραφή (graphé), translated as “light drawing.” This is such a fitting description of this art form, because in photography light is fundamental. And for my own sake, light is doing the drawing for me instead of my own hand! I can’t paint or draw for the life of me; I lack the precision and dexterity in my hands. Trust me, I’ve tried to teach myself to draw — yikes.

That’s the beauty of photography as an art form: While painting and drawing prioritize skill and dexterity, photography relies on the diligence and good eye of the artist. And some mad Photoshop/Lightroom skills. With the skills that life gave me, photography is my artistic outlet.

So you’re probably wondering where I’m going with all this. In brief, photography is my art form, my passion, just as much as painting, sketching, and making music is to others.

Why do I turn to art? Or better yet, a question every person should ask him or herself: Why should I do art?

I have a degree in philosophy, so I tend to overthink things (in a good way of course!). Anyways, I’ve studied many philosophers, to include the English empiricist, J.S. Mill (1806-1873). One of his most acclaimed works is his On Liberty, in which he tries establishing norms of liberty in relation to authority, coming up with the now famous notion, the “Tyranny of the Majority.” When J.S. Mill was young, he went through bouts of depression, leading to thoughts of suicide at 20-years old. According to his own autobiography, it was when he turned to poetry, to art, showing him how beauty generates from compassion and empathy, that he was able to pull himself out of his hopeless depression. This period of his life and his turn to art influenced his utilitarian philosophy, subsequently becoming one of the iconic thinkers of English philosophy. It’s devastating to think, if the young J.S. Mill committed suicide, an act Albert Camus called ‘the only serious philosophical problem,’ then On Liberty would never have been thought up and written. And as a nerdy philosopher, the thought truly makes me squirm!

Now, don’t freak out by all this morbid talk. But who doesn’t have his or her own moments of melancholy in life? (Not clinical depression). Abraham Lincoln self-proclaimed that he was often melancholy, turning to jokes, Shakespeare and the Bible for consolation. Art is a personal outlet for people. It’s my own personal outlet, my consolation, to handle the tribulations and drudgeries of life. Time heals all and beauty heals well.

And I once got a fortune cookie that said, “Dispel negativity through creative activities.” So yeah.   Photography is fun.

Here, I’ll expound on how I see photography as art. How the static moment can eternalize life in ways so meaningful and personal to us. Hopefully, this essay gives you a peak into my mind on how I approach every shoot, every photograph.

Anybody can take a photograph. But it’s something more to create art.

Art History & Photography  

It’s said that Michelangelo was not a huge fan of painting (and yet he painted one of the most beautiful pieces of art in history, despite having no experience with frescoes — the Sistine Chapel). He preferred sculpturing, which he considering the “true art form.” One of the reasons for his distaste of painting was what he perceived as the ease of painting compared to sculpturing, believing that a lazy artist opted for painting instead the “truer” art form of sculpturing. When I first learned this, it blew my mind — imagine how great of an artist Michelangelo must have been to deem paintings “easy!” Imagine how low his opinion would be for photography as an art form!

To be a great photographer I think it’s important to study art history. In photography, form and structure are given to you by nature. But painters and sculptors have to create the form and structure, then manipulate both to create art. Why does this matter to photography? Because I believe a photographer who disdains and refuses to learn Photoshop, Lightroom, or any photo-editing software is probably not an artist. One of the best photographers I’ve ever known taught me to treat Photoshop as a canvass on which to create art. The myriad capabilities on Photoshop or Lightroom is exciting, to be able to magnify a certain artistic element or remove distractions that take away from what the artist wants to portray. This is crucial because I think at the crux of what differentiates a photojournalist from an artistic photographer is the freedom and discretion to use Photoshop or any photo-editing capability for artistic intent. Photojournalists eschew Photoshop as disingenuous, as they should. But the self-proclaimed artistic photographer who refuses to learn Photoshop because of pride or whatever reason is akin to Michelangelo’s “lazy artist.”

That being said, there is no excuse for a photographer to be lazy taking the photograph. The ability to manipulate the physical scene, using the proper lenses, adjusting natural and artificial light etc. are all imperative. A good photographer works in the frame first and foremost. Photoshop is no substitute for a good eye.

The great wonder of photography is its ability to eternalize the moment, freezing the moment forever. Not even painting or sketching can quite capture this, and maybe that’s photography’s advantage above all other art forms. Physicists theorize that we cannot travel back in time; photographers say yes we can. I think Ed Sheeran’s song “Photograph” puts it beautifully: “We keep this love in this photograph, we made these memories for ourselves… Times forever frozen still.” Still photography truly makes a static moment live forever, nourished by the substantiating meaning we put into that single dot of existence. What a beautiful thought that something can live forever in a photograph!

What is meant by “artistic photography?” Simply, the artistic intent to create something beautiful or sublime with photography’s power to eternalize the moment forever. Or in other words, artistic photography wants to create a masterpiece out of a photo, focusing on every nuance and detail of the shot, breaking down the minutia of the photograph’s composition. It took Michelangelo four years to complete the Sistine Chapel; one can imagine it took him weeks to make sure Adam’s nose looked perfect!

Artistic photography also implies the artist’s intent to impart meaning into his or her masterpiece. A photographer always takes a photo for a reason. But an artistic photographer also creates a reason for the photo. If I’m taking a photograph of a mother and her child, I don’t simply want to document the mother and child’s interaction. I want to create something that represents that relationship between mother and child. Why is it special? How do the unique personalities of the mother and child create their special bond? It’d be easy to just get a simple photograph of the mother watching her daughter play with her toys, and sure you’d likely get a cute photograph; but that’s not necessarily artistic. Rather, lets say, you observe that the baby daughter has this unique tendency to put her hand on her mother’s cheek, and every time she does so, her mother’s beaming smile makes her giggle in such a way only infants can giggle. And that’s the photograph, the static moment, the artistic photographer wants to capture: the beauty of their unique relationship, of maternal love and the innocence of infancy! Maybe its not the cutest photograph you can take, but it’s certainly the most artistically authentic.

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling’s most famous panel, “The Creation of Adam,” is an example of artistic intent and authenticity. The panel probably depicts an anatomical form of the human brain. (Yes, I’m talking about the Adam-God finger touching panel). If you look closely, there is an uncanny outline resembling the human brain, formed by angels and the robes surrounding God. According to some theorists, Michelangelo did this on purpose to evoke God’s bestowal of intelligence on the first human. This isn’t too far of a stretch for Michelangelo’s masterpiece, considering he painted this fresco at the height of the Renaissance with its burgeoning curiosity of the new sciences, for which artists, like Da Vinci, had a keen interest. Renaissance paintings are the apogee of anatomical precision with their artistic depictions of the human anatomy. Michelangelo in his “The Creation of Adam” likely created this reason for his beautiful fresco.

And I suppose that’s the sum of what artistic photography is — thinking that much more, thinking further of what a photographer wants in his or her photograph. The skilled National Geographic photographer, Joel Santore, says that the trick to great photographs is simply to think. This is spot on.

One could scrutinize and say, “well what you’re saying is artistic photography is simply good photography; of course you want to take photographs that say and mean something more!” In a world of ubiquitous iPhones and their nifty cameraphone capabilities, anyone can become a good photographer. And if they think a little more when taking a photograph, they’re that much better of a photographer. But the difference is, while a good photographer is occupied in taking good photographs, an artistic photographer is personally invested in each photograph. I suppose this is where we get into some grey areas: if a person repaints Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, is she or he still an artist? Is the copy considered art? Maybe, but you certainly wouldn’t put the copier or the copy on par with Michelangelo and his masterpiece. There is a certain transcendent quality in true art, not so easy to elucidate and talk about. In the same sense, artistic photography is on some other, higher level involving a significant and substantial amount of personal investment.   An artistic photographer is driven to learn every technique, every Photoshop trick, every photographic trick of the trade, everything possible, to become better so to create a masterpiece — as opposed to simply relying on Instagram or Snapchat filters for a pretty photo.

Personally, my favorite kind of photography is portraiture; I enjoy getting to know individual people and seeing with my mind’s eye how I can represent his or her personality in a photograph. The most dynamic photography is probably that of individuals and people. Human beings certainly lend themselves to creativity.

The Portrait

“There are many pictures of Lincoln; there is no portrait of him.”
~ John Nicolay, Lincoln’s personal secretary. 

Abraham Lincoln was the first U.S. President to ever be photographed. Of all the photos ever capture of him, none captured his mirthful personality and kind soul — except maybe the last photo he ever took, a week before he was assassinated. In his last photo, the stressors and pains of a civil war are ravaged upon the President’s face. Grief is mired on his weathered face. And yet, a slight smirk peaks through the portrait. No other photo of Abraham Lincoln comes close to demonstrating Lincoln’s jocular and friendly personality. Just before the man belonged to the ages, photography captured it for all time.

“It is a face handsome and homely, sorrowful and mirthful, penetrating and opaque. Amid the contradictions stamped into a half trillion pennies is one truth: Abraham Lincoln’s face is unforgettable. But it is a visage that we, 150 years after his death, will never truly know. Lincoln’s personal secretary, John G. Nicolay, described ‘the long gamut of expression from grave to gay, and back again from the rollicking jollity of laughter to that serious, far-away look that with prophetic intuitions beheld the awful panorama of war, and heard the cry of oppression and suffering.’ Perhaps this is why, Nicolay wrote: ‘There are many pictures of Lincoln; there is no portrait of him.”

National Geographic, April 2015

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I hope this brief essay was worth your time. I value my photography and consider it personally. I may not be the greatest photographer in the world, but I will always try my best to create a work of art, a masterpiece.