Seeing Through Photographs
About this video
In this short introduction, photographers reflect on how every photograph is shaped by choices, from framing to printing to sharing. They suggest thinking of photographs as processes rather than products, and describe still photography as a way to stop a moment and see the world differently.
You'll be able to
- name choices photographers make that shape an image.
- explain what it means to treat a photograph as a process, not just a product.
Key words
- frame
- To choose what goes inside the edges of a picture and what is left out.
- still photography
- Photography that captures a single, unmoving image rather than video.
Transcript
All photographers make choices, whether it's how you frame something on Instagram, what kind of camera you use, what kind of print you make, how you share that picture. The power of photography is way more complicated than people admit to. You have to learn to understand how images are constructed.
I got into photography because I wanted to know something that other people didn't know. What makes a single image important anymore? How do you make that image that people are going to run to museums for? What is it about me? What are we bringing to this photograph?
I think you have to contend with a lot, and that is a very worthwhile experience. When you think of photographs as processes, not as products, you start really understanding what they really mean. How is the process different? I want it to be not about grabbing the moment, but about dancing with the moment, collaborating with the moment.
Can you see what I see? No, no one else can see it. You can stop something and look at it in a way that you normally wouldn't see it, and I think that's part of the real fascination with still photography. It lets you step outside yourself to kind of look at the world in a different way.
Okay, so it's going to be half a second.
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