Eight things we love about photography – Ease

In his song “Some Kinda Love,” Lou Reed observes “Between thought and expression lies a lifetime.” Anyone who has ever tried to write anything more profound than “brb lol” knows exactly what he means. Careful expression of thought in words requires considerable practice, vision and revision. Just writing this brief blog post took the better part of an hour, and I’ve been practicing this for decades.

Most visual arts involve similar levels of commitment. A painting begins with sketches followed by hours of skilled application of paint to canvas. Not to mention the hours and days and weeks and months and years of classes and practice that bring you to the moment you apply the first stroke.

In photography, the distance between thought and expression is usually a fraction of a second. Post-production adjustments notwithstanding, a photo is created complete and entire the moment you press the shutter button. Using a camera doesn’t require extensive training. It requires a finger.

That’s not to say that someone new to the art can master it in an instant. Even in an age in which our tools are capable of doing a lot of thinking for us, good photographic communication requires an understanding of composition, camera mechanics and visual storytelling. However, no matter how much lining up and fiddling each shot requires, the ultimate act of creation requires no motor skills at all.

And that means anyone who can see can take a picture. The downside of such easy access is the average of more than 200,000 photos posted every minute of every day to Facebook alone, the vast majority of which are crap by professional standards. The upside is that so many people are now at least trying to express themselves visually. That’s either a democracy or an anarchy of art, depending on your point of view.

Because the creative act can be accomplished in such short order, it expands the realm of art. A young cat reclining in a shaft of sunlight might not be momentous enough to drop everything and spend hours creating a sculpture or oil painting, but he’s worth the minute required to grab a camera and press a button.