Welcome

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Welcome to the Philosophy of Photography forum on photo.net.

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Ther was an old LUSENET forum of the same name, which decided to move rather than be incorporated into the photo.net structure when LUSENET was wound down. This is not that forum, though it may serve a similar function.

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The purpose of this new forum is to provide a venue for serious

discussions of photography - or discussions of serious photography. "Serious" doesn't mean dry and humorless, but it means dealing with the real basic issues which underly photography, not voting on your "favorite lens" or discussing why Canon is so clearly superior/inferior to Nikon, or even asking what the best film is for photographing black dogs in Italy at 3pm in the afternoon. We already have forums that deal quite well with those questions.

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As mentioned in the "about" section of

this forum, the "Philosphy of Photography" is to photography

as "Theology" is to religion. It's a discussion of the underlying

principles of the subject rather than their practical application.

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It's quite difficult to define <em>exactly</em> what will and what won't be

considered appropriate for this forum, but we'll find that out as we go along I guess! I've zapped a few questions from the archives of the photo.net froum just to start things off and give readers some idea of the sort of topics we might discuss here.

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However, from the start, the intention is that this forum is not for the discussion of specific items of equipment (or how to use them) and it's not "yet another place" to ask for image critiques. We already have forums devoted to those topics.

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This forum will not accept "no words" threads. Again there are other venues for such posts. Small images (less than 511 pixels wide) may be attached to posts when they illustrate some point being made in the discussion.

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We have no categories defined yet. As the forum develops, categories can be created if it seems they will be of use.

Thanks for starting this forum! Long overdue.

this is what i was hoping to find when i joined photo.net :)

As a Philosophy student it's nice to see a crossover between my two favourite subjects. :o) It'll be interesting to see how the apparently narrow pursuit of photography fits into the very broad field of Philosophy. I guess the obvious subjects are Ethics and Aesthetics, but what I'm personally hoping to see is someone approach the Metaphysics of Photography - what meaning photography has; how our preexisting knowledge affects our understanding of an image; how our beliefs can affect the way we look at the world. Photography as dialogue may also provoke some fascinating debate.

Great idea! This will stirr things up a bit. ;)

<p>As a new photographer, I really do often wonder; why do we photograph things?

<p>I am also an analytical person, and I try to reason with myself as to why I should take my camera out, and record on film, an image that virtually noone else will ever see.

<p>Also, being new to this art, I see photography as one of those things that are only for the affluent, frequently invaded by a few modest peasants that somehow aquired the knowledge of the nobles.

<p>I'd like to ask some of you what you see photography as, why you do it, and when one figures out he's potentially good at it?

Sorry Bob. Posted wrong. If this is a valid post, can it be moved to a proper thread?

Never mind Bob, just found John post "Engaging with Photography". Good read!

Please delete my posts.

Finally!

It was really needed!! Thanks a lot!