Fine Art Photography is About Vision not Cameras

Fine Art Photography is not about the Camera but rather the Artists Vision

There is a common myth that the camera takes the photograph. Very often in photography do we hear the phrase “Wow, your camera takes great pictures!”? It does not. Fine Art Photography does get created because someone buys a nice camera and clicks the shutter. Fine art photography is created when an artist has a creative vision, and then uses his technical mastery of his tools to create a photograph.

In many cases the camera will actually not take a great photograph at all. The camera is simply a tool that allows a photographer to do a job. The artist Michelangelo did not have a special paint brush when he painted the Sistine Chapel and the award winning author Stephen King did not have a special typewriter or keyboard to write his novels. They had tools, and they used those tools to create their vision. Their vision, and their mastery of their tools to execute on that vision is what resulted in great final product. Not the tool.

The person controlling the tool is what creates the final product, whether it be a paining, a novel, or a photograph. Make no mistake, today’s digital camera is no simple tool, it is a highly sophisticated computer system. It will evaluate what it “sees” and will make dozens of decisions – what to focus on, how much light to record, what combination of settings to use to record that light, what part of the photograph is truly white, and so many others. It is this intelligence that is both its beauty and its curse.

Mastering the tools that you have today is going to improve your photography dramatically. Understanding the way your camera works, and how it makes these critical decisions is going to what takes your photographs to the next level. Chasing the newest piece of gear, the latest camera body, that faster lens, that more powerful flash are not going to dramatically improve your photographs. You must know how to get the camera to record the scene the way that you see it in your vision. Perhaps you would like a shallower depth of field to blur out the background in portrait photography, or maybe you would like the shutter speed to be really slow, in order to blur the waves for seascape photography. In either case, knowing what you want is one thing, getting your camera to do is another. Take out your manual, play around and practice, practice, practice!

Once you have your camera recording the scene as YOU see it, you have to decide what exactly to capture. One of the key things is not just what to include in a photograph, but what NOT to include. In so many cases an image can be improved simply by taking a step to the left or a step to the right. Your camera cannot help with this, only you can evaluate a scene and decide which way to compose it. The artist makes all the choices when it comes to the composition of a photograph.

I hope that you have enjoyed!