Has the Art of Photography Been Eliminated?

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Chances are, it’s been years since you took a roll of film to be developed, only to be horribly disappointed by most of the finished photographs you got back. With digital photography as the norm, bad shots are simply deleted, and you’ll never have to pay for prints of photos you don’t like.

But saving money on bad prints is only the smallest and least of the advantages of digital photography, as high-quality cameras and excellent digital manipulation software become more and more affordable for the average person.

So is the art of photography dead, given that just about anyone can take a fairly decent picture, run it through some filters or other manipulations, and make it look like it came from the office of a professional? Absolutely not! The same skills that were necessary for film photographers to take a professional image are still necessary for the amateur digital photographer.

Fortunately, online classrooms eliminate much of the cost and time associated with attending a physical photography classroom. Sites such as my-photo-school.com are still helping would-be photography artists fully understand their equipment, develop their eye, and sharpen their skills with tutorials and critiques by professional photographers.

There’s So Much More than Point and Shoot

You can often get lucky with a quick point-and-shoot photo, but to take professional-quality photographs requires some additional skills. Turning a person, landscape, statue, building, or flower into a masterpiece means that you are deliberately manipulating various aspects of your camera as they interplay with exterior sources of light and shadow—the lenses, shutter speed, focus, and distance to the subject being only four considerations.

Developing an eye means that you become adept at quickly deciding how best to portray the subject, from a bride in her veil with lowered, demure eyes to curls of snow whipping off a craggy mountain peak, or from a fragile blossom dripping with early morning dew to the laughing face of a child at play. Once you know how you want to portray your subject, you also need the knowledge of how to use your equipment to accomplish it.

Different Types of Photography Focus on Different Skills

Being a travel photographer who can take images that make the viewer sigh with longing to travel to distant locales is different than capturing the world from a child’s viewpoint. General instruction helps you do a little of all types of photography, and if you are an amateur who just wants to bump up your skill set for personal pleasure, you certainly have that option with online instruction.

Go further to really develop a passion for specific types of photography. Macro lenses bring the miniature world to life, or you may be fascinated with peoples’ faces as they go about their daily lives or respond to strong emotional stimulus. Learning to perfect those skills means you need to learn from the experts. No, the art of photography has definitely not been eliminated simply because nearly anyone can afford a quality digital camera or pull out a smartphone.

What’s more, there is a great deal of pleasure to be had in perfecting professional photography techniques and applying them to even casual family photos or vacation shots. If you are interested in becoming an artist, learn from the trained artists at online tutorial sites such as my-photo-school.com to increase your talent and learn to look at the world with the eye of an artist who works with a camera.