Sometimes, people ask me what types of photographs, eg. portrait, landscape, that I’d like to take. I basically take photographs of everything. To me, photography is a hobby, not a way of making living, so I do not have to be particularly competent in creating specific types of photographs.
I use my cameras to record what happens around me. The photographs are my view on the world. So when I share my photos on web, I am sharing my views to the world. Sometimes, people make comments on my photos, such as this one on flickr, and I reply. This is enabled by Web 2.0, a technology that makes the web more interactive. It is a new way to connect to people who never meet before and may not meet each other in the future.
So what’s the point of sharing my views to the world? I think human beings are social animials, and they love to share things. I am just simply one of them. The subjects that I share are usually the loveable ones, beautiful flowers, cute animials, festivals. But I also take photos that look not very pleasant. I had my first camera, a point-and-shoot film camer, more than 10 years ago. One day, I took a photo of the garbages that were discarded on a river bank. My friend asked me why? He thought it was a waste of film. I thought it was to record the status quo of the environment that we lived. That image clearly shows the lack of environmental protection attitude from some Chinese.
To end this post, I shall direct you to a talk by David Griffin(Director of photography, National Geographic), called How photography connects us to the world. His talk certainly explained my ideas in a much more intuitive way. I hope to make one of such talks in the later stage of my life, when I have enough materials to show.
