CONCLUSION

Place a camera in the hands of a chimpanzee at the zoo, and in a short time the chimp will prove that taking pictures is easy. On the other hand, making photographs— creating images from light as practiced by the best photographers—is a complex and deliberate process. Unlike taking pictures, making photographs entails not only pointing the camera at something and releasing the shutter, but consciously regarding the ways in which photography’s technical elements relate to the subject at hand. The technical elements of photography—the photographic frame and its borders; the quality of focus as determined by the aperture or lens; shutter speeds and their effects in relation to time and motion; and the physical media used to create the aggregate image—constitute the grammatical basis of photographic language. As such, they impose both visual qualities and aesthetic meanings upon the images they create.

Practitioners have to understand and use the elements of photographic language in order to make photographs successfully, since they are the means through which the photographer is able to communicate and create. A solid foundation of technical understanding and practice, combined with visual literacy, independent research about the subject, and a sensitively trained eye, allow photographers to use the medium accurately and effectively.

PHOTOGRAPH © ANGELA FARIS BELT, FROM THE SEIRES MY GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE, 2007. CHROMOGENIC PRINTS SIZED 4″ × 4″.