Just what is photography(P)

Just what is Photography?

I've been asked to analysis photography, photographers and different fields that an artist works from.......

So with such a big scope where do I begin!

At the beginning with the likes of William Henry Fox Talbot or Joseph Nicephore Niepce. The men who gave us the first images of this scientific way to capture light, creating an act of drawing in a photogenic form.                          .

World's earliest surviving photograph, 1826 or 1827: View from the Window at Le Gras

Photography has moved on since the days of Talbot and while his findings were relevant at the time, I feel now the modern day definition of photography opens up such bigger and different elements!





 Concept

Why, why a photograph of the subject?  What thinking goes into taking a photo? Why not a drawing or sculpture, description, writing or the subject itself? What is the intention?

When out walking at the weekend I intentionally took my phone/camera with me! I wanted to capture my surroundings and being in my home town I guess I wanted to capture my past also.  To capture what I was feeling or experiencing at that very point in time. Looking at the photo's I took I think I failed to get the exact emotion or sense of power that in myself I had created! Either from memory or actual being there!

The places I visited had changed from when I was young and didn't have the same idle I had originally hope for. The tree I had wanted to visit had gone and the woodland itself was some what dead from the memories I had as a child.  Things change.......

Documentary Photography
To document means to record, the idea of truth or to capture a person or moment in history!
So I guess this makes documentary photography either a long-term project or way of story telling!

Photojournalism
As I see it this is similar to documentary and could fall into the same category... Used as the same way a journalist writes about a topic this captures it....Photojournalism has been used to capture massive world events from world wars, social documentation to modern day disasters...

Ernest brooks world war 1 photographer

Ernest Brooks Trenches

    

Streets of London John Thomson



Streets of London 1876-1877





boy found on Turkish beach........2015

So what do my photos fall into? Self expression or opportunistic moment of time with no relevance what so ever to anything.....My time, my moment and ME...OR as the brief says My World - My View - Self, place & space. .Does that make them irrelevant.....Who decides what category or importance a photo has? My intent was to take some nice photos of life, my life and the way I was viewing it at the time....Going back in time also, an older me against a once forgotten backdrop. While I can't compare my own images to the ones above, for me they are just as important and relevant as it was my life my moment and my time...

For me this image does and doesn't show the scale or power of these pylon's...The size and noise that come from them when standing underneath is something quite eerie. Changing in climate change and resources are again another example of history!  

Tilting of the phone adds different viewing

working life......standing in another man boots

old pottery piece in the river probably from the jam pot of a miner. I collected lots of these pieces from my walk. All from past links for my village.  Leaving a story to my families life and working of history....relevant and existing,  forgotten but there all the same. 

Pattern and colour, texture and shadow

chance happening. No edits used here but interesting how the colour has been distorted (why is that?)

Another old used bit of history gone by.......had enough relevance at the time of taken the photo!

  I noticed in the region I was at the past was everywhere to be seen, yet many wander about without looking. The old miner pits and bits of crockery, the plyons and wind turbines, the old forest dead but with signs of spring still shooting through...new buds with dead wood......

For me this is documenting history past and present........As to how to turn my expression into what is being asked of me I find hard! To understand the difference between wedding photography and evaluate or analyse the practice I'm struggling to grasp a starting point. Location Photography falls under so many different categories and can include things like fashion...... or editorial that its making it complicated.