It’s a more interesting question than it seems and until recently I would not have said that I am a ‘photographer’ rather, I would have said that I take photographs. My friend Gary an accomplished artist, in response to my question, “How do you become an artist”, replied “When you say you are”. I think that response had considerable depth to it because you cannot claim to be an artist unless and until, you decide you are and also start to think like one. I have been taking photographs for 60 years and it was for me a tool of my trade as a scientist. I am no longer a jobbing scientist but I continue to take photographs because I love doing so and because it shows more of the subject than I could ever see without having captured images of them. The latter thought applies not only to the macro photography in which I specialize, but also to taking photographs on the street. Only recently did it occur to me that I was thinking like a photographer – what will make a good subject, how would you frame it, when would be the best time of day to shoot it, and how would you ‘paint it with the available light’? Also, I have become reasonably satisfied but at the same time dissatisfied, with my pictures. That is to say I have a really long way to go but I am on a road albeit that at my age, I may not have long to make the rest of the journey! The dissatisfaction is surely an essential spur to the process?
It seems to me that to be a photographer just as to be an artist, it’s a good idea to study the work of other artists or photographers. Certainly, you cannot know where you are on the journey to becoming a ‘photographer’ unless you know where that journey can lead. I really don’t think that the journey has an ‘end’ for there will always be a distance to go. I have my photographic heroes – Ansel Adams (of course!), Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau and the list goes on but in my tiny little world of macro-/micro-photography I find most of my heroes on-line and am in awe of the wonderful YouTube essays of Naturefold (https://www.youtube.com/@naturefold – what an incredible young man), Michel Widell (https://www.youtube.com/@MicaelWidell – great reviews and pictures and photo walks with a touch of Zen), Stewart Wood (https://www.youtube.com/@StewartWoodArt) and several others. I am not sure that macro-photography can ever aspire to the heights reached by ‘the greats’ in photography and whose works are by many considered ‘art’. However, a wander around the galleries of the Nikon Small World Competition (https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/) will reveal not only just how stunningly beautiful the universe of small things can be but also the ‘craft’ involved. The photos taken by these experts in micro-photography certainly show their mastery of this craft but perhaps it is simply the beauty of the objects themselves that make some of the photos what one might just call ‘art’?
Macro- and even-more-so micro-photography, require learning about technically challenging aspects of these genres. Perhaps the one thing all photography has in common is the wish to show others something about the world that they might not otherwise have seen, that is often hidden in the strangest of places and in a moment in time. While landscape, portrait and street photography reveal features one might have seen with the unaided eye but did not, macro- and micro-photography often show you things that you had no hope of seeing without the use of photographic technologies. Both micro- and macro-photography are a doorway into a largely unseen world – pushing the door open confirms what one should already know from what you can see any day and anywhere; nature is stunningly beautiful and photography can only open eyes, it cannot make you see.
Am I a photographer? Yes but only because the objects are beautiful, I want others to see them and I had better hurry.
Tartaric acid crystals viewed using polarized light. An example of the invisible (birefringence) made visible – we are surrounded by such things but would never know.
It never for one moment occurred to me that the thing that so painfully bit me (a horsefly) and that I swatted without a moments thought, was itself a work of art!
A damselfly – something you have seen but will not see like this unless you get up at an unholy hour and search amongst the reeds.
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