What is art? What makes an artist? Art is so subjective that any answer is correct.
Anything could be art or interpreted as art but, understanding how limitless and liberating the world of art is, is where the beauty and power of art truly lies. With no set definition or standard of creation, anyone with the passion to create and the feelings to convey has the potential to become a world-renowned artist and that freedom, too many, is addicting. Art knows no bounds as it encompasses everything from painting and sculpting to writing poems and making music.
Personally, photography has become such a powerful and creative outlet to express emotions and thoughts through color, framing, and by capturing the stillness of a moment that will never return except in your photograph or your memory. The depth of a photograph varies from person to person but the goal of art remains unwavering. To inspire self-reflection and appreciation of art as well as invoking a feeling in the eye of the beholder.
Perhaps my idea of the goal of art is radically different than yours, but whats truly important is not what the goal is but that there's a goal at all, something to be achieved. But photography is more than just taking a picture, and not every moment is meant to be captured.
The human eye is a photographer's best tool that helps distinguish an effective, thought-provoking picture from a picture that would not do justice to the subject or the scenery. It is in those moments that you must realize that if capturing the view in your screen is not possible, you might as well sit and marinate in that very moment before it passes so you can cherish in your soul and memory what you could not capture on the screen.
Though I do believe that it requires a special amount of appreciation and disdain for the immediacy and uncertainty that life and art alike share, too truly take in those moments as an artist and let them pass in front of you. However, nowadays everyone seems to have it so backward.
People would rather view a stunning concert through a blurry, shaky 5-inch screen display so they can save it and never watch it again than viewing the performance live with their own eyes and savor every last stunning moment. If you identify with the latter then I truly commend you, but if you identify with the first group a single question comes to mind.
Were you present at that moment and truly able to cherish everything going on around you? Or as a photographer, I know I won't always be able to catch the amazing hues the sky shows me, or every exotic plant and animal, or every beautiful person I come across. So I live with a small daily amount of regret of not carrying the perfect camera at all times and instead I open myself up to the infinite beauty the world has to offer me and I'm always ready to cherish it.
Perhaps it is that openness and wonder of what has yet to be captured that drives every generation of artist to define themselves as something new and something unique.
