Being a photographer in this age of technology is hard.
Taking photos has become something very common in our society. Everyone is a photographer. The average person most likely owns two or more devices that have a camera feature. In 2014, according to Mary Meeker's annual Internet Trends report, people uploaded an average of 1.8 billion digital images every single day. Making this number grow to 657 billion photos per year. These days, new apps and social media websites have that number growing even more.
We can take masterpiece photographs with our very own iPhone, let alone a DSLR that you can probably buy on sale at Best Buy or on Amazon. This convenience has the photography industry growing. Almost anyone can point a camera and shoot a picture. This fact has other artists turning against the practice, saying that photography isn't really an art. I have personally heard comments like, “Taking pictures requires no effort. You just record everything you see.” I say to these people that it isn't about just taking a picture of anything.
The people who literally just fall into the industry after buying a camera on sale and taking a couple of pictures at their friends wedding are my least favorite kind of people. These are the same people that take duplicates of sunsets and flower pictures that you can easily find on Tumblr and Pinterest and caption it with “Wow I'm such a good photographer!” With social media like Instagram and Facebook it's easy for many of these people, who aren't well versed in the art to get business for themselves and be contracted to take photos for other people.
Being a photographer is so much more than taking pictures that everyone already sees every day. The decent stale flower or stereotypical sunset picture can be taken by any civilian with an iPhone 5s or later.
Being a photographer, I am conscious of way more than just the picture I am taking. I am conscious of the composition I am composing, the lighting, the elements and principles of design. I am conscious of highlights and shadows in the frame, and of the colors being used and the way it affects the mood of the photograph.
Photographers use tools like perspective and leading lines to manipulate the viewer in the way we want; we make the viewer see what we want them to see. We use our voice and point of view to deliver to the viewer more than an image. We deliver a story, a situation and an idea that is uniquely ours.
Photographers are artists.
