The Psychology of Photography: What Drives Us to Shoot?

<p>What drives us to take photos?</p>

<p>Why do we like what we like?</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

To make something of what we see?

 

The question behind your question is "why do humans have an urge to create or invent anything?" Is it an outgrowth or

manifestation of a survival instinct?

<p>Picaso said: "All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." I agree with Ellis, that humans are creative because it serves our need for survival. Without creativity, we'd still be like the apes. Even animals show creativity though, we just have greater capacity for intelligence.</p>

<p>Lannie, you will receive many personal reasons. In some ways some psychological enlightenment may also be had by asking the question, "as a human what drives you not to photograph"</p>

<p>Apart from the artistic and craft pleasure, which is considerable, I shoot to explore things, to understand myself, to understand the material and immaterial space around me (the "genius loci" perhaps) and to recreate what I see as something of beauty or other significance. It is also a form of communication with others when words are less powerful in the particular case that has led me to perceive something special and to photograph it. </p>

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<p>Apart from the artistic and craft pleasure, which is considerable, I shoot to explore things, to understand myself, to understand the material and immaterial space around me (the "genius loci" perhaps) and to recreate what I see as something of beauty or other significance. It is also a form of communication with others when words are less powerful in the particular case that has led me to perceive something special and to photograph it.</p>

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<p>As I read your comments, Arthur, the "expressive" function came to mind. (That is subsumed in what you said, I believe.) That expressive function is probably why we sing in showers, shout "Hey, listen to this!" when reading the newspaper to the sweetie, etc.</p>

<p>As a friend of mine says in a sign stuck on her refrigerator, "Everybody is entitled to my opinion." Is that egotistical, or just being sociable? I take it to be the latter, at least in most cases.</p>

<p>Perhaps taking and sharing a photo is above all simply expressing an opinion. (I wonder if cave drawings predated words. Did the political cartoon start as a cave drawing?)</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>There is a saying (I don't know where it comes from) that's used because it's so obviously not true for most sport fishermen/women:</p>

<p>"A fishing pole is a lever for extracting fish from the water."</p>

<p>If you said "A camera is a lever for extracting pictures from the world," you would leave out almost everything that is what drives me to shoot, just as fish-pole-as-lever leaves almost everything to do with the joys of fishing. (I'm giving a negative answer because ... the positive one gets awfully flowery.)</p>

<p>[i'm taking the post title to be about why we <em>shoot</em>, not why we <em>make</em>]</p>

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<p>I'm giving a negative answer because ... the positive one gets awfully flowery</p>

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<p>Aw, come on, Julie. Flower for us for a while. I'm serious. Do it, if you don't mind emoting in public. Tell us what makes you shoot--and to shoot what you shoot, if you will.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>I'm taking the post title to be about why we <em>shoot</em>, not why we <em>make</em><br>

<em> </em></p>

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<p>Since cameras and brushes have been invented, we see something neat, we "capture" it or draw it, and then we say, "Hey, guys! Look at this!"</p>

<p>In the old days, before the creation of either photography or painting, one may surmise that somebody climbed to the top of a hill, saw a beautiful view, and shouted down, "Hey, guys! Come look at this!"</p>

<p>We feel a compulsion to share our vision: that's my answer to my own question. You can close the thread now, mods.</p>

<p>--Lannie<em><br /></em></p>

<p>There is a bone flute that dates from 40,000 years ago and it was not the Model-T -- it was not the first.</p>

<p>Visual art is what, 5,000 years old? Put on your tap shoes, Lannie, then call the thread.</p>

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<p>Visual art is what, 5,000 years old?</p>

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<p>And we know this how?</p>

<p>"That's the oldest we have found."</p>

<p>My theory, Julie, is that the earliest visual art was of the genre "naked cave girlfriend drawings." They are hard to find because the censors kept/keep taking them down.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

Off the mark by at least 10,000 to 35,000 years too. Some would even say you'd have to add another 495,000 years to those 5,000 to get close to the truth. But who's counting.<br><br>Now that you have settled the matter you were discussing, how about another psychological aspect that comes through in the use of the word "shoot".<br>"Shoot?" What do you think, or wish, you are doing?

But how do you dance, or make photos, to show which of the two is driving you, Phil?

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<p>Now that you have settled the matter you were discussing, how about another psychological aspect that comes through in the use of the word "shoot".</p>

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<p>Q.G., I shoot in order to intrude into the lives of others, and to be generally as obnoxious, irritating, and disagreeable as possible. I use the word "shoot" to describe what I do in order to emphasize how inherently aggressive this admittedly despicable behavior really is.</p>

<p>I am a serial shooter.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Dear lord, Lannie, don't ever go to Pompeii. It won't be the girls that stand out ... [if I say that '5,000' was bait, you all will pelt me with rotten tomatoes; may I request lima beans instead? I love butter beans.]</p>

<p>Q.G, is it possible that you are a cynic -- who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing?</p>

 

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<p>Dear lord, Lannie, don't ever go to Pompeii. It won't be the girls that stand out ... [if I say that '5,000' was bait, you all will pelt me with rotten tomatoes; may I request lima beans instead? I love butter beans.]</p>

 

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<p>Julie, what on earth are you saying? I'm sorry if whatever I might have said sounded like a criticism. I was just looking for another opportunity to make a disgusting, sexist joke. </p>

<p>Except that it was true, I believe. . . .</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>The challenge of spinning straw into gold -- extracting fresh and worthwhile / atypical images from a world seen every day.</p>

Hello Julie,<br>Is that what you think a cynic is? I'm quite sure cynics know the value of everything and don't care about the price.<br>Or do you mean a cynic who - unlike other cynics, and despite and unrelated to being a cynic - also "knows the price of [etc.]"?<br>So is it possible? Well... no. Or maybe. Who knows. Does it matter?<br>The question you raise is why you bring up issues of knowing price and/or not value?<br><br>What drives some to drive by shootings, Lannie? Same thing, perhaps? (And what would you drive on your way to a shoot?)

<p>[Lannie: "I'm sorry if whatever I might have said sounded like a criticism." No <em>I'm</em> sorry that I gave the wrong impression. I enjoyed your joke and ... do you know about all those phalluses (phalli?) in Pompeii? Oh dear, this is getting too tangled up.]</p>

<p>************************</p>

<p>I've thought about a flower for Lannie, and this is the best I can do for now:</p>

<p>When photographing, I choose. <em>I</em> choose. In glorious freedom.</p>

<p>All day long, I conform, I cooperate, I do as I'm told or work with everybody else (even my dogs -- I'm the food vending machine ... okay, we love each other, but I'm still the <em>loved</em> food vending machine ... )</p>

<p>Being in a condition to commune with the full spaciousness of my own choosing is just ... delicious.</p>

<p>Q.G. I'm loving your posts. If you slow down, I'll have to think of another stimulus for you; you're a nice splash of vinegar on our psychological salad.</p>

So you're a cynic, Julie. Good!

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<p>When photographing, I choose. <em>I</em> choose. In glorious freedom. --Julie H.</p>

 

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<p>This seems to have some relevance to that other thread, the long one that is still moving along with discussions of evoking emotion--admittedly a topic that I raised.</p>

<p>My photography is expressive of something that is bottled up in bureaucratized and homogenized society. That something is indeed freedom and whatever other psychological needs are being suppressed in hierarchical, coercive social structures. How that "something' comes out, and why it succeeds once in a while in producing a photo of my own that I like, I really don't know. I am increasingly uncertain that I even need to know. Some of it seems serendipitous. Some of it even seems guided by forces beyond myself. I'm not trying to sound like a mystic here. That is simply what I feel sometimes.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Julie, here we go again. Please do not be offended: The quest to find out what makes an evocative photo might be analogous to trying to write a marriage manual, or a manual about how to bring a woman to orgasm. Yes, some techniques work, but how do they keep from becoming mechanical, routine, and (ultimately) predictable and boring?</p>

<p>Creativity is elusive in both art and love.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Do any of you while in deep sleep at night have dreams of the photos you've made? I don't.</p>

<p>I shoot reality to create awake state dreams of my choosing. The one thing in my life I know I can control.</p>

<p>Everything outside the frame and not part of this dream photo are hints at the unconscious state that exists if and when I pass on from this world. It also acts as a reminder of the limits of this dream state. It's a short stay so I make the best of it by living dreams of my own creation in the form of a photo. It's also quite easy compared to other forms of expression.</p>

<p>Perfume.<br>

The space and the condition, not the things.<br>

Full-body witnessing.</p>

<p>Does that sound right, Lannie? I pick up my camera and there is this other world, <em>immediately</em>. It <em>is</em> (I don't say 'there' because there is no separation; it <em>is</em> the world, when the camera is to my eye). In that immediate world, I am of a different state of mind. The difference is not fantasy, or imagination; it's real, I am different.</p>

<p>It's not evidence that I would love to 'collect,' it's the space and condition of my camera-to-eye presence. Presence, witness. If I just wanted you to see some place or thing, I'd just take you there and point at it; but that's not the camera-eye space-condition that I witnessed. That's just things.</p>

<p>There is no manual, in my opinion, because manuals are for things, not space and condition. And it's 'a short stay' (from Tim) because we are <em>not</em> free.</p>

Fascinating. Why are things so different when you have a camera? Why are you in another world then, and not when, say, talking? What is blocking access to that Other World such that only a camera (or having sex, Lannie?) can open it up? How and why does a camera posess such Magic Wand properties?

<p><em>"What drives us to shoot ?" </em><br /> <em><br /></em>Certainly not psychology - or philosophy, for that sake. Maybe social-psychology, social anthropology, sociology, political sciences and few ounces of applied economics - but as I'm a fervent believer and practitioner of cross- and plury-disciplinarity, it is obviously a mixture of them all, <strong>plus </strong>a personal engagement in society and the well-being of fellow humans.<br /> Why photography ? and not any other means of expression available like writing, painting, sculpturing, drawing ? Because the question was about "shooting", which I only do in photography !<br>

<br /> This was for the "us" when "I" am concerned.<br>

<br /> Sorry for this small intermezzo in an otherwise most adorable chit-chat, which I enjoy as long as it last.</p>