Can only cameras take pictures?

Many friends who want to learn photography are struggling to buy a camera, feeling that they can't take photos without a good camera; There are also many friends who take out some photos taken with expensive cameras and proudly show their photos to others.

In fact, many times I think they just took an ordinary photo, not a photographic work; Then, camera photography, pinhole photography and mobile phone photography are all means or tools to realize photography, and our real purpose is photography.

For these friends, my answer is:

Since it can be called a work, it is necessary to condense the photographer's painstaking efforts, record events with aesthetic feeling or bearing certain significance, and give readers a beautiful enjoyment or spiritual feeling. Compared with aesthetic feeling, I think the latter is more important, because the latter can give the photo soul. For example, the following "displaced mothers"

This is a picture of a poor woman taken by Langer on the farm during the Great Depression.

The characters in this photo are not beautiful, but they are regarded as classics, because they reflect the poverty of an era and the suffering of the lowest human beings, as well as the confusion and tenacity of a mother of three in the face of suffering.

Then the question is, does this photo have to be taken with a camera?

The answer is definitely no. If you give Alan a mobile phone or a pinhole camera, she may be able to shoot better, because they are relatively smaller and more suitable for shooting documentary works.

So, what really matters is not what equipment she took, but at that time, she appeared in that place and pressed the shutter.

Therefore, these photos can't be called photographic works just by picking up the camera and taking pictures casually. Many people use the best equipment to take the best quality photos, but they are only good-looking photos. If we must praise them, then the contributors of weather recorder, terrain recorder and encyclopedia picture are the highest honors for them, such as the following one.

Although the flowers are beautiful, if you vote for an encyclopedia as a picture of flowers, people will thank you, but this can't be called a work, because there is no thought, because everyone can take such photos when they come to this lace, and there is no shortage of you.

Nowadays, mobile phone photography is the most popular, and it is very useful for cameras to divide the world. The picture below shows Niu Siyuan's The Old Man and the Eagle, the winner of last year's iPhone Photo Contest.

In this photo, I saw the passage of time, the harmony between man and nature, love and reluctance ... and from a technical point of view, exquisite composition, clever light and shadow, contrast of texture, perfect blank space and so on. Can you say that this photo taken with a mobile phone is not a photographic work?

Whether engaged in photography or photographer, I think the most important thing is always to have a heart of pursuing beauty and art, technology and equipment are always means, and art is the purpose.

So don't use the camera in a hurry, think more about where I am going to shoot, what I am going to shoot, how to take meaningful photos, and then take the best equipment you can afford and start your photography journey.