Camperjim
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Shasoc wrote:
However, let me play the devil’s advocate part for a moment. We can definitely say that every photo, even a snapshot, reflects the style and vision of the photographer. Just framing a shot expresses the photographer’s vision/creativity, no matter his/her technical skills. Apparently, you don’t need to be an artist to be creative.
So, accordingly, every photo is creative. And since art is creation, every photo is art.......
Here are definitions (from Gemini) that make sense to me:
An artist is a person who uses imagination, creative skill, and talent to create works of aesthetic value, expression, or performance.
Creativity is the ability to generate original ideas and turn them into valuable or useful realities.
Your devil's advocacy argument contains an error in logic. Artists typically utilize some level of creativity when making their works, but that does not mean every creative act is artistic. What I think is more important than creativity is what the definition calls "imagination", or the terms I prefer artistic vision or goals or even intention. We also sometimes use the word "style" to describe the resultant endeavor. The other important aspect of art involves conveying aestheitic, emotional, expressive or even intellectual concepts.
These sorts of discussion can quickly become confusing partly because of semantics but because we approach photography differently. We take photos to remember, to depict, to record something special or unusual, to impress others. The fine art aspects are often totally absent or mostly ignored.
I know I take pictures for lots of reasons sometime with the intent to create "art". In those cases, I often ask myself what is it that I see that is special? How can I capture and convey that? What are the camera settings, lens choices, compositional characteristics that work best? I think about framing, relationships, point of view, field or view, what is and is not going to be included in the image. I make decisions about creating a sense of depth or not. About impact or subtlity. About colors, tones, shadows, light. For the past few years my emphasis has been on visual rhythm. I have been exploring a better understanding of that attribute and how to use it.
Many of these decisions and approachs need to be done quickly. It is common to make decisions and push the shutter within minutes or even a few seconds. The short time periods we work in do not diminish the artistic aspects. Working on a painting for hours, days, weeks or more does not in my mind make painting more artistic.
When do we move beyond technical craft to the realm of art? I cannot answer that except to say there does not appear to be any dividing line. There is often some aspect of artistic endeavor in the simplest snapshot. Then there are those images where the artistic aspects are beyond doubt.
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