Straight out of Wiki-“The word “photography” was created from the Greek roots φωτός (phōtós), genitive of φῶς (phōs), “light” and γραφή (graphé) “representation by means of lines” or “drawing”, together meaning “drawing with light”.
Interestingly, the early inventors and influencers of photography, independently came up with their own names for the craft of, what was eventually know as photography-Nicephore Niece (Heliography), Henry Fox Talbot (Talbotype/Calotype) and Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (Daguerreotype)
Most Photo historians credit the origination of the name, “photography”, as well as “positive” and “negative”, coming from scientist and astronomer John Herschel (note-also a life-long friend of one of my favorite portrait photographers, Julia Margaret Cameron)
Fast forward a couple hundred years to 2023.
Photography, both it’s etymology and core mission is, “drawing with light”.
As a photographer, who only has the raw materials of time and light on his side, I draw with light
Plain and simple. To me, in my own narrowly defined view and definition of photography, it’s a camera, not a computer proposition.
As important and impressive as these are, it’s not drawing with apps. Not drawing with Photoshop. Not drawing with AI. Not drawing with software.
It’s drawing with light. Glorious, magnificent, sensational, remarkable, often unrepeatable light!
Click. OMG. Click again. And again. And again. Pinch me.
Oh glorious and mysterious light, bathe us in your glowing warmth and gleaming radiance.
Photography uses a simple, sealed box, with an optical lens, to capture an image on a light sensitive surface.(film/sensor)
When I talk, regularly and passionately, about having a “Photographic Approach” to my iPhone photography, through this box-with-a-hole-in-it, I want my photographs, taken with this box/optical combo, to look like, well, photographs, not illustrations
I want to use my camera, any camera, to draw with light.
I want to picture and portray that light, through my camera, in every nuance imaginable
While I am certainly modern and in vogue about the phone-camera I use to draw with light, I am traditional, to the core, about how I go about sketching and composing my light-centric creations
I’m like a turn-of-the-century writer hopelessly devoted to his favorite quill.
I draw with light because this same and ever-present light has drawn on me, and draws on me, everyday, everywhere I go.
A week back, someone on Twitter, who didn’t particularly appreciate my forward-thinking but backward reflections about mobile photography in general, asked me, quite sarcastically of course, if I learned photography from Henry Fox Talbot. Haha.
Yes, in a way I did. We all did.
My millennial friend meant it as mockery and ridicule, but I took it with heartfelt honor.
Yes, indeed, and I’m not ashamed about this, I stand proudly on the shoulder of photographic giants and geniuses, all who paved the road of photography for each us us, through blood, sweat and tears.
Just like my colleagues of history past, like them, I too, draw with light.
Click
Jack
