What Photography Means to Me

 Referring to Marvin Heiferman's article "Photography Changes Everything"

    As a student majoring in film-video arts, I have always seen photography as an artistic medium used to create a narrative or express an argument whether it was personal or on the societal level. Right now, I am taking a narrative film class and our first project involves using only photographs and narration to tell a compelling story. Every video is a series of photos that together make up a sequence. Taking film down to frame-by-frame allows students to learn the importance of planning out the angles, lens length, and depth of focus you can use to express the message you want your audience to understand. Photography to me was just a form of artistic expression that you could use to map out your creative works with things like shotlists.

    After reading Heiferman's article, I realized that photography is truly everywhere around us. Not every image has to have an artistic, creative element to it. For example, I never put much thought into just taking pictures on my phone. Usually, I take photos to record an event, a happy memory, or just something I need to remember for later. None of these photos required me to think ahead and figure out a message to convey in them. Sure, I could look back at the picture and develop a meaning for myself, but in the moment, the purpose of the photo was to record something I could remember later. Not every photo needs an artistic element, some could be made to record history, see things the human eye can't see, or hold information that people can study and learn from later.

    Now, I believe photography is a universal tool for a variety of occupations that we use to further advance as a human race. We have brought the power of photography to everyone. The average person could then expand their own mind by holding their memories in the photos on their phone. This would make our phones a type of hard drive that expands what our minds are capable of. An artist could use photography to capture a natural beauty that the human eye typically misses. A doctor could use photography to see a tumor or internal bleed in their patient that they can't see from the outside. A store owner could use photography to emphasize and market the value of their products or to catch a thief who walked past a surveillance camera. Photography has no incorrect uses and it serves multiple purposes for people of every background. Today, society as a whole is suffering from narrow-mindedness that makes them believe only their point of view is correct. Maybe we will be able to use photography to break this trend of arrogance and push society to see things from a new lens.