Why make photographs?

[Robert McClure]

I am hard-wired for the need to discover and understand things in my world. For me, the Creation exists to be discovered. Discovery and Spirituality are equivalent to me. The camera allows me this discovery.

I am continually led to the point of having to just sit and wonder. Attempting to wrap intellect around the larger issues which photography brings me to simply fail. The camera for me is like a vehicle on which I ride. It brings me to the point where I don't need it, or can no longer use it to experience what I am brought to.

[gfen]

Keeps me off the streets, outta trouble, and a steady influx of my capital helping keep the self-employed eBay professionals in business.

I haven't quite got it worked out well enough to make up moving artistic statements, goals for mankind, or much of anything other than fun.

But, fun's still a good enough answer....

[Joseph O'Neil]

for me, photography is like sex - if you have to think about why you are doing it, maybe you shouldn't be there to begin with.

:)

joe

[John Flavell]

And to expand on Joe's comment: Always keep a condom in your camera bag. Eighteen percent grey. Nothing kinky.

[William Mortensen]

There are the usual monetary reasons for professionals, often we do things for friends, sometimes as a reaction to or statement about something, sometimes we feel the need to document an event or thing, maybe it's a teaching tool, sometimes it's just a souvineer...

But in my own personal photography, the answer to the question, "why?" is the same as the answer to most other questions about why we do what we do... "Because I want to."

[John Berry ( Roadkill )]

I have found that acceptance is much more soothing to the soul than understanding.

[Randall Ellis]

I'm going with Mark on this one; I like it, therefore I do it.

- Randy

[Michael Gordon]

I do it for the groupies!

[Nick Morris]

I tried my hand at music, and have been banging on guitar for a number of years (has it been 35 years?) and though I have no talent or skill for playing music, I have found that the effort of concentrating on music made me more aware of the sounds, and music around me. I found that I listened more carefully, and appreciated more the sounds around me. So it has been with photography; in the study of other people's work as well as my own. Especially with LF, I find that taking the time to focus my attention on the scene, has made me more attentive, appreciating more the world around me. As someone said, "taking time to smell the roses". In doing so I find that I can more easily find meaning, and sometimes beauty in the grotesque and ugly. I like to think of it as art's gift to man.

[Terence Spross]

It brings me to the point where I don't need it, or can no longer use it to experience what I am brought to.
Yes there are people to whom travel has to have a purpose, just going to "get away from it all" is not a reason. I know a couple of people that therefore invent an excuse - its all on an unconcious level. Like fishing -- "I'm going fishing" - a vailid reason to go away to a distant place. "I'm going hunting" same thing -- some people a change of pace is all thats needed "I'm going to the mall" you can tell thats whats going on - they rarely buy anything, or catch anything.
So its no surprise that there are people with camera in hand (and they might be pros 5 days a week) who say "I going to get some pictures this weekend" Its really the same reason.

Maybe I'm the other way - I get away to a remote location - and everything for a while is the shoot - I look for the composition, I'm absorbed in what I do. When I put the camera away I look again I see everything differently then --- maybe it the non-picture pefect thing that catches my eye.

I do it for the groupies! What am I doing wrong - er I've never seen any groupies around?

[Steve J Murray]

The world is so interesting, I just have to get some of it on film (or silicon) and make a print, of course.

[William Mortensen]

Well, if I didn't make photographs, I don't know how I'd justify spending all that money on film...

[Marko]

Well... For me, the real question is why not?

Life is a series of unique brief moments that no two people can see in quite the same way, streaming past us. None of them will ever happen again, and those that we do not capture on film/chip will be lost forever.

What really facinates me is how few people bother to notice all the intriguing details and even random arrangements of details that surround us everywhere we go.

Those moments and those details are so special that it would be a pitty not to photograph them.

[jnantz]

i have a bad memory - photographs help me remember what i would easily forget.

[Chad Jarvis]

For the drugs.

(John, you sound like Winnie the Pooh.)

[Mike H.]

Because I keep hoping to get that perfect photograph before anyone else does.

[Mikael Tran]

I do it for the the thrill of cheating death and go against the tide mostly because i fancy to things that are in themselves innocent and beautiful. I am sure most of you here would agree when you stumble upon something that is so breathtakingly beautiful, at that very moment, there is such an indescribeable feeling of content and peacefulness, enough to immerse your soul beyond utopia.

[John Kasaian]

Its like playing with light and time---capturing something alive not in a mayonnaise jar with air holes punched in the metal lid but on fiber based paper---and then being able to keep it safe and alive.

[John Berry ( Roadkill )]

Chad,
Interesting you would say that. My wife has commented on more than one occasion that I have the personality of a bear.

[Leonard Metcalf]

To share my love of natures beautiful creations.

[Alan Davenport]

I make photographs because, if I didn't, my wife would yell at me for spending all that money on the case of E100SW that's in the freezer.....

[Duane Polcou]

Reflection on spiritual sustenance feeds the need for the vortex of creation to level its' plane as it arrives in coincidence with same vortex's aura of micro-vibration. That having been established, one's own resonance can resonate on a frequency within reasonable resonance of this utterly retarded question.

[Walt Calahan]

I don't know how to do anything else.