Photography is all about taking pictures. But it's a creative process, not a process of theft. Who knows where that phrase came from? "Taking
pictures."
Show of hands?
I thought not. This is how it happened: Some joker way back in
the 1800s confused "Let me take these plates back into the
developing tent," with "Let me take a picture."
And if you've
never been in a developing tent from 1864, you haven't begun
to sweat. It's a portable rubberized canvas contraption that
keeps out the light while keeping in the darkness, along with
the photographer, stale air and toxic developing fumes. Be glad
you're living in an era 140 years later, but I digress.
I'm through with the "take" word. It is peculiarly English. In most languages they use a different term, and its high time we 'mericans started gettin' hip to the process. You never actually rob the world of a picture when you trip the shutter, all you do is suck up 0.00000000000000000000000000000001 gram of photons with every shot. That's less than anybody can weigh, by the way, exactly one-bazillionth of a gram, and frankly, nobody will think of you as having purloined them.
Photography,
ideally, is a creative process. You capture these photons since
they were reflected freely into the environment without taxation,
and you organized them through means of composition, framing
and decisive moment of capture into a graphic representation
of the ongoing milieu.
Well, at least that's
what I'm going to do for the next X-number of photos. My days
of image larceny are over. But what term should I replace my
old verb?
I could catch
pictures, or extract them from the free flow of photons. Perhaps
I should think of photography as a photon collection process?
I'd like to avoid calling every image a shot, since shots put
something out, and photos really harvest something IN.
Besides, getting
into the habit of saying "let me get this last shot"
doesn't go over too well with the police who have ears for that
sort of phrase.
Snatching pictures seems too much like a heist, incarcerating images seems to sheriff.
Getting them seems to simple and accumulating them only really happens all of the time.
But what's the verb for inhaling the special shot?
Landing the picture? Bagging the shot?
Do I accumulate them, nab them (naa), pluck them, harvest them, haul them in, snap them up, freeze them, snare them, reap them or simply obtain them via photographic means?
Or do I do
as most other countries declare, just make the picture?
That's pretty good--and it translates well, too--make the photo.
But occasionally I'll get them, seize them, grab them and if I'm very lucky, I'll nail them.
It'sCanon
For your Canon Digital Rebel- DSLR: Canon Digital Rebel EOS 300D eBook is already on the shelf. DSLR: Canon Digital Rebel XT is done. Then DSLR: Canon 20D. These are great cameras with a great deal inside them, so we put a great deal of information into their eBooks. You'll find things here that nobody else ever told you about and not even Canon knew or could discuss.