Areas of decisions
What is a photograph and what is just a snapshot? Who is a photographer of a picture? What photographers think and do? How?
(All this will be very subjective. There are other views and some of them are well based. But this is how I think it.)
There are three main areas of decisions which has to be made before you can call something a photograph and somebody the photographer of that picture.
There are thematic decisions. Theme, substance, what you are photographing.
There are artistic decisions. How you express that theme and/or substance.
There are technical decisions. How you can succeed in those thematic and artistic decisions.
Most often these three areas are in that order. Thematic ==> Artistic ==> Technical.
If these decisions have been made in a reasonably successful way, the result should be a photograph. Otherwise it's a snapshot or not even that. This is the view which is largely shared among pro's & professional evaluation. And this is also my personal view.
(And this is who pro's don't like when asked to evaluate amateur snapshots. What could they say? Lie? Or or insult people by saying that "this has something good, but it's not a photograph".)
A photographer of some picture is a person who has made artistic and technical decisions of that photo.
Theme might be given (by customer or employer or a friend or...). The artistic and technical decisions about how how to handle that theme are photographing.
A time trigger, a photo cell, an assistant or a computer might trigger the camera. That does not make them photographers if someone else did the artistic and technical decisions. This is very hard to understand to some people with less or none knowledge and understanding of photographing.
You can talk about a photograph when and only when thematic, artistic and technical decisions are well made and in balance. And you can talk about a photographer when you are talking about about person who did that balancing. That means you can have photographers without photographers and photographers without photographs.
So... What do you see here?
©Alan Aspie
You see a snapshot - not a photograph but a snapshot.
I'm a photographer of that snapshot. So this is a non-photo with a photographer. Failing to succeed in thematic, artistic and/or technical decisions and handling them drops this out of a category of photographs to the category of snapshots. But those decisions have been made and balanced - just not successfully.
And you must do this - fail - to develop yourself as a photographer. And you must see and admit that you have failed. And you must learn from your mistakes and correct them. That's the way to learn photographing.
If you think you are good, you learn nothing. Narcissistic thinking does not work with photographing. Humble way does. See the mistakes you make. See how you fail. Do it again, with less mistakes this time. Or with new and more interesting mistakes!
(I think I'll write later about those 3 areas - thematic, artistic and technical. But I don't promise that.)