Christine Gray: The Photographer's Eye Summary and Response

Introduction: The introduction of this article focuses on photography as a new medium of art and expression. It talks about how thousands of people became photographers when the practice was introduced, which created a massive library of work to inspire future photographers. Considered a threat to art as it was commonly known, photography incorporated a type of reality and truth people weren’t used to working with or seeing. To make the natural world your easel, your canvas, your studio, was something that seemed so simple. However, with such unlimited material, it takes great skill to control it.

The Thing Itself: As previously mentioned in the introduction, photography presented the practice of working with reality. It is up to the photographer to embrace the continuous scenes around him or her and make decisions about how they want to portray a figment of time. Over the years, those portrayed figments of time, or photographs, become more important that the event they were depicting. Photographs capture still pieces of our memories that we can later put together to try and remember the best we can.

The Detail: The natural world does not work like a studio in that you cannot rearrange it to tell the particular story you wish. As a photographer, you have to be able to look at what is presented to you and pick out the details that you feel are most compelling to your agenda. This may involve looking at many different angles, and getting extremely close to your subject(s). Photographs don’t need to tell a story, they simply show the truth.

The Frame: When you are looking around in your day-to-day life, there are no boundaries. One of the many jobs of a photographer is to decide what bit of their view should be included in a photograph. The frame is very crucial to the outcome of the photograph; it separates what is included in the still from what gets to continue happening outside of it. The frame helps the photographer decide what is most important in the scene and what needs to be included in the photograph to make it successful.

Time: The time a photograph is taken is always the present. You cannot take a photograph of the past or of the future. Photographers get the pleasure of capturing art in the moment. There is some risk in only being able to capture art in the moment. Sometimes the photograph does not turn out the way you expected or intended. However, some of the most engaging photographs are those that were thought to be “mistakes”. Sometimes lots of unsuccessful photographs need to be taken in a moment in order for the perfect photograph to be captured.

Vantage Point: Photography is unique in that is allows for scenes to be viewed in ways that the average person would not normally see them. Whether it’s from another person’s view, an animal’s view, the view of something entirely different, a scene can be completely transformed from “normal”.

Personal Reflection: When I was reading the introduction and it was talking about how so many people became “professional photographers”, it reminded me of how today, it seems that everyone thinks they are a professional photographer. With the amazing cameras that smart phones come with and the editing programs that are so readily available, everyone thinks they have all the tools they need to be a professional photographer. That has made me a little bit nervous about going into the field of photography, because it seems to be getting harder and harder to set yourself apart from the average iPhone user. However, reading the rest of this article reminded me how much more there is to taking meaningful and aesthetically pleasing pictures. It made me feel excited that I have the opportunity to learn about such a unique form of art. The thought of reality being everything that is going on around you at all times and having the power to choose parts of it to capture in a frozen photograph is extremely liberating and actually makes my head spin a bit when I think about it a lot. The options are endless, and I have the opportunity to learn how to find the best ones.