Photography is Your Art!

In life, to ‘prioritize’ literally means to put 1 thing in front of everything else. You cannot ‘prioritize’ more than 1 thing (that is why the notion of ‘prioritie(s)‘ makes no sense).

If your main artistic outlet is photography — why don’t you make it tantamountly important in your life?

The camera is your paint-brush

Too long there has been a negative bias against photography. For too long photographers have been looked down upon by other visual artists (painters — to be exact).

But to be frank, we cannot blame the painters. We can only blame ourselves.

It seems that most photographers want to be painters (Henri Cartier-Bresson for example). It seems that we photographers have an inferiority complex– we don’t see our artwork as legitimate in our own eyes. That is why the early days of photography (pictoralism) was all about trying to make ‘still life photos’ that resembled the ‘fine art’ of the time.

But times are changing — with photography, phone cameras, the internet, devices, and the future of visual images.

Why do painters paint?

I think painters delight in the world of colors, tones, textures, brush-strokes, and they enjoy the creative frenzy of putting paint to the canvas. There must be some sort of Dionysian-creative ecstasy which is associated with the actual act of painting.

I realized that the same is with photography; I love the creative frenzy of shooting photos, and also the creative joy associated with processing my photos as well!

A life without art (photography) is not a life worth living

Can you imagine a life without photography, or a life without you being able to create your own artwork? If so, is it a life still worth living?

I think this is what separates us artist-photographers from others. We prioritize our own artwork. We see our artwork as more important than our “careers”, our material possessions, our status-symbols, or the dollar bills we got in the bank. We thrive in our own sphere of artistic bliss: as long as we are creatively productive, we are happy!

Proclaim yourself.

You’re a visual artist, period. Nobody needs to affirm you; only you need to affirm yourself.

As artists– we delight in our own sphere of creative activity. We never look over our shoulder to see what others think of our artwork. We simply focus on creating our own artwork, and ask ourselves:

Are the photos I’m making bringing me delight or not?

If your photos aren’t bringing you delight, then you gotta figure out how to change your style or approach.

This can mean changing your post-processing style, changing the subject-matter of whatever you like to photograph, or perhaps even changing your mind-set and attitude towards photography-art (focusing on pleasing yourself, instead of random people on social media).