I think it’s funny to watch professional photographers squirm to avoid ever using the phrase “take a picture” – as if describing what they do in such a deplorably plebeian way would immediately and completely discredit the artistic merit of their work.
“I made this photograph”
“I took this image”
“I produced this photo”
“I made this image”
“I engineered this photograph”
Come on, just say it. “I took a picture.” Sayyyy iiiit.
Nah, I ‘captured this moment’ just before I ‘photographed this unique perspective’.
FWIW, I think ‘engineering a photograph’ has more connotations of doing more actual setup of the scene rather than the scene just occurring naturally and being captured.
My camera took this picture.
As George Carlin knew, you don’t take a picture, you leave a picture.
I think this is worth addressing again, since nobody else did.
There’s a difference in degree and, I think, in kind between “taking a picture” and something else which we might as well call “creating an image.” It’s probably fair to say that when one squashes the button on the camera, one always intends to make some sort of picture, of something, with the intention of evoking a reaction in someone. The question is, in whom, what sort of reaction, and what sort of picture?
When I photograph Aunt Sally at her 90th birthday, I probably want to remind myself and possibly my closer relations of Aunt Sally’s party: in whom = me; what reaction = a memory, a recreation of what I felt at the time; what kind of picture = pretty much as it looked. Whether there’s a pleasing coincidence of form and tone, etc, well, those would be nice too.
When I photograph a pretty flower, it’s mostly the same deal – I want to capture to “oo, a pretty flower” feeling. Maybe I’d like a little more effort paid to form and tone, to make my photo pretty, like the flower. My goal, though, it to evoke the reaction I feel right now, probably with a pretty fair representation of the flower.
When I “create an image” I want to evoke a reaction in more people, I aspire to have every viewer react as I want them to. I may or may not want them to feel as I do at this moment, and the image rarely represents reality in any real sense. Working with a model, I’m emphatically lying to the viewer, and if I succeed, I am definitely NOT evoking the sensation of working in a studio. I’m manipulating form and tone both to make them pleasing, and to support my lie. My intent, my methods, and my results are almost completely different from the Aunt Sally scenario.
You’re welcome to call it “taking a picture” too, but it’s really not the same thing.
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I took a picture.