What is photography? Q: Why do people take/make photography? People take photographs for various reasons it can be seen as a significant feature to daily lives, as people tend to use photography to capture life moments. Photography can be a form of happiness, nostalgia and admiration, as well as enhancing your creativity. People may make photographs as the outcomes tends to be unexpected and form an attraction in an abstract way; thus, it makes it fascinating. On a daily basis, I particularly enjoy capturing images whilst analysing my surroundings and finding something that attracts my eyes in a specific lighting, angle and form. Photography is a memorable, interesting and enjoyable element which captures the special moments of your lives.
Q: Why is photography important? Photography has an important role as it can incorporate our daily memories which we may forget along the journey of growth. Photography is a special segment within our lives as our human brains cannot save every memory created from birth and onwards; hence, it is significant as it allows us to reminisce moments we miss. It can also make us feel engaged with the photographs as it can have ambiguous meanings. "A picture is worth a thousand words". Capturing photographs can be aesthetically pleasing especially with abstract photography as there is a sense of overwhelming confusions.
Q: What skills do you need to be a good photographer? To be a good photographer you should be able to understand the concepts of different genres in photography. Most importantly you should have some understanding and control of lighting, form, lines and different angles because they make an important change to how reality is represented through photographs. For example, taking a photograph of a surface of an object can be specifically depicted differently depending on your organisations of lighting, angles, lines and form. Most professional photographers tends to be natural with being able to capture stunning pictures, as their eyes can sense how to take good photos. I think that to grow to be a good photographer, you should understand the functions of the camera and all the different forms of photography because capturing photographs can be represented differently.
Q: How many different kinds of photography can you think of? Variety of different concepts of photography are formed as the world develops, new trends are introduced and technology grows. In an advantageous way, we are now able to take photographs in many different ways such as architectural, nature, abstract and more. Portraits and landscape photography were the main basic form of photographs, it has always been a trend from years ago and still onwards. Portraits captures the facial expressions and features of either and individual or people together, whilst landscapes capture a view of an area; it has now expanded to a panorama which represents a view in a 180° angle. In addition, nowadays we are able to make photographs instead of capturing them and they are known as photograms and chemigrams which is the process of using machinery and different chemicals to produce a photograph.
Q: How does photography help us see the world? Photography can be almost as accurate as our eyes, it is an ideal visualisation of how reality looks in photographs. The significant difference is that our eyes are not always able to focus on the perspective forever, hence photography is useful to capture the moment our eyes are attracted to. Additionally, we cannot photographically memorise places we've been to and every detail of the analysis of the area, photography enables us to reminisce the features of areas. Photography also allows us to see places that we've never been to, for example if you have never been to Dubai. Without photography, our imagination and communications would caption Dubai. This not only makes us see how it looks but it means that we don't physically have to be in Dubai to see the area whereas in the olden days before the culture of photography, we had to.
Q: Can photography images be trusted? In some cases it can be trusted as an ideal visual of people, places and objects because photograph allows us to see how things specifically are visually represented without needing to be in front of it. However, it can also be untrustworthy as it can be manipulated in different ways such as artificial lightings, the angles taken and through especially Photoshop. Photographic images can turn out differently than how it is in real life depending on the control of those factors. Furthermore, the media tends to use photoshop to recreate an appearance in order to sensationalise the image. For example, they tend to manipulate women's body for public approval which makes photography untrustworthy.
Q: What are the similarities and differences between photography and other types of visual arts? The similarities among visual arts and photography is that they both form a visualisation of how reality may look. In addition, photography and arts also have the ability to manipulate how reality is in an abstract way thus they are similar. They are in relation with the way the advantage of representing things, as they can adjust the angles, lightings, lines and form whilst in reality it only follows one lighting so things cannot be seen differently. However, on the other hand; they differ in terms of timing and what they can capture. Photography is explicit and fast in terms of capturing the perspective whilst in arts, takes a long period for it to look exquisite and measurements for accuracy. Significantly, arts doesn't have the ability to capture every frame of a second in a rapid speed whilst photography does. For example, in the olden days people couldn't figure out the movements of horses due to its unbelievable speed. The way arts represented the actions of horses looked as if the horses jumped big gaps which wasn't the case once photography was introduced. Photography was able to capture every frame of action that the horse had which gave us a deeper analysis of how horses actually ran within seconds.
Q: When would it not be okay to take a photograph? It wouldn't be acceptable nor appropriate if you took a photograph of something or invading somebody's privacy or without their official approval and permission. In Macau, it is against the law if you are taking pictures destructing their privacies thus makes it not okay to take a photograph. It is also wrong if the persona feels uncomfortable or insecure about being photographed; therefore, their decisions should be taken into consideration. Additionally, some museums or galleries are against photographing artists' works as they fear the consequences of plagiarism.
Q: How do you know when you've taken a good photograph? When I analyse my surroundings and find something that attracts my eyes, I take various of photographs adjusting the lightings, contrasts and from different angles until I am pleased with the outcome. I tend to know when I've taken a good photograph when it comes out abstractly unique or when it feels somewhat special in an aesthetic way. Especially during my practical experiments whereby the outcomes tends to be unexpected, I admire my photograms and chemigrams because it is a "one of a kind" experience.
Q: Are photographers also considered as artists? I think that they are because it takes time, patience and specific skills to be a professionalism at photography. I would say it is also a form of art as it is attracted and admired by other people, it also can be easing for those that are deeply engaged with photography, It is also not as easy as it seems to take stunning and aesthetic photographs because not everybody has the same kind of skills. Especially photographers as some are naturally born with the talent of being able to capture interesting photographs by their eye and thinking methods. Art can also be incorporated with photography, in experiments which some photographers are talented at.
Q: Where is the best place to see photographs? The ideal place to see and experience a diversity of concepts of photography would be a gallery or a museum. This is because different kind of photographers are displayed have different genres which shows the diversity of photography in a room which I think empathises the talents they have. It also illustrates their uniqueness and what concept they particularly specialise in photography, which could be portraits, aerial...etc. Moreover, it is also mesmirising and fascinating as you walk in a room of different kinds of photography and to find one that stands out to your senses the most.
Q: What kind of photography interests you the most? I admire all kinds of photography in general but If I had to pick a few it would preferably be, portraits, bokeh, architectural, water, artistic and movement photography. Portraits because I feel like just by analysing one's features can tell a lot about their identity, by staring at their gaze you can feel some sort of story whether it is poignant or a cheerful one. Architectural photography is something I grew up to admire as from a young age, I was often mesmirised by the creativity and design of architecture. Water photography can come out unique even depending on a couple of drops of water, it somewhat attracts me perhaps by the depth of detail. Moreover, artistic photography is also one of my preferences because I like art and photography in general, but both of them emerged makes it even better. Lastly, movement photography shows the rapid speed of how seconds, minutes, hours pass by and it is appealing and fascinating that it has that representation.
Q: What confuses you or frustrates you about photography? It is difficult to be wise with the way you edit or adjust your photos because I tend to feel like it isn't perfect enough and it ends up becoming more corrupted. In addition, getting the right lighting and angle can also frustrate me as what I picture in real life and attempt to take a photograph of it can come out differently depending on the megapixels and HQ of the lighting and contrasts. Also, when I take many pictures and none of them tickle my fancy, I would feel like it was futile and time consuming. It confuses me on how the industry of media is merely focused on the perfections of images because photographs are supposed to be naturally attracting not body shaming women putting their self esteem down.