I think that photography as an art has taken a pretty big hit since the widespread acceptance of digital cameras. Hipstematic takes an arbitrary picture of a coffee cup taken with an iPhone and turns it into “art”. Bigger memory cards mean there is less and less risk in pressing that shutter button. Like never before, “art” in photography is largely an accident. But is it art at all? I think not.

I define art, not by what is produced, but by what the artist’s mind was doing when it was produced. By that definition, art must be intentional. You cannot simply fire off 10,000 pictures to find those 2 works of “art”. What you found wouldn’t be art at all, it would be a series interesting coincidences. Think about it this way—imagine that you could record everything your eye sees in brilliant high definition and at any point, pull out a single frame and publish it to Flickr. You probably wouldn’t consider that art. Yet this is often what digital photographers do. They point their camera in a thousand directions and find a few images that are interesting enough to share. Anyone can do that.

So, as digital photographers, how do we find our status as an artist? I submit that we find that status by learning to be intentional; by making calculated decisions about the things we photograph; by refusing to press the shutter down before we’re sure that what we’re about it capture is what we intend to capture.

Now, before I move on, let me interject briefly. Photography has a great history of accidentally capturing incredible moments. In fact, some of history’s iconic photos were total accidents.  And that’s okay. Because at that time in history, skilled photographers routinely and intentionally captured beautiful images. And sometimes, they caught beautiful accidents. But it was the exception, not the rule. And that’s part of what made those photos so remarkable. Today, it’s often the other way around. So, while there is a place for incredible coincidences in photography, as photographers we should once again aim to make them the exception, not the rule.

So, in the interest of learning to become true artists, here are six techniques to stretch our intentionality in the creation of our images and heighten the artistic integrity of our work. It’s all about thinking more, and shooting less. Read More→