Photography Case

"Smile for the camera, say cheese!" People are constantly taking photos, whether it be at a public function, tourist attraction, or family portrait, our memories live off of photos. A person can't always look at a photo and know what is happening in it. One can give an assumption to what might be happening but won't know the truth behind the photo.

Photography is both an art and a science. Photography allows us to express our feeling and emotions, but to do so we need to master the scientific part of the medium. Unlike a painter, who is in direct contact with his subject and his canvas, a photographer is separated from his subject by the camera and from his canvas by computers and printers today and by darkroom equipment previously. There are three fundamental components of what we call art. First, is the artist, second, is the medium, and third, is the art work. All three, clearly, are connected. The essential idea, however, is that the artist produces an art work within a selected medium.

In addition to these three fundamental components, we might also suggest that subject and audience are also important to art. The subject is something real from which the art work starts. The audience is a compound of viewers which may never be more than the artist themselves or may become millions of people spread out over centuries of time. Saying that the subject is something real does not indicate that it is a physical object. It could be a thought that comes to the artist or it could be a complex image that has a strong affect on the artist. Saying that the audience is a complex of viewers should not infer that they only perform some physical act of viewing.

An audience engages with an art work by being affected by it and this may go so far as suggesting that they come to an understanding of it or interpret it. Every artistic medium has a substantial technical side that requires mastery. Mastery having been established, the artist often invents new aspects of the medium or uses it with considerable variation. While black and white photography would seem to be simply based on a standard selection of films, papers, and chemicals, the history of photography demonstrates a huge variety of approaches to combinations and processes and store media. The pushy and innovative photographer or artist might want to make up his own blends and coat them on glass bottles. Mastering the medium is the first step in becoming an artist. For a photographer, this will mean gaining an understanding of technical equipment and processes and knowing what kinds of photographic images result from specific treatments in both the camera and the darkroom. We are privileged, today, to have a large variety of fine films, papers, chemicals, darkroom equipment, and computer software commercially available; but the central issue really knows how to use whatever you have.

The photographic art work, or image, is usually a fine print that