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Lost In a Sea of "Pretty Pictures?"

Am I creating meaningful photos or are my pictures just good for screensavers and postcards?

By Tas BPublished 5 years ago 2 min read
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Sunset on the Seine, Paris

I got my first DLSR camera for Christmas about two years ago. I mainly wanted it to make films, as I wasn't too interested in photography. The only photos I took were with my drone. I was fascinated with aerial photography, seeing the world from another perspective. My drone dedicated Instagram was full of birds eye views of parks, cemeteries, and landscapes, but that was it.

After I got my DLSR camera, we took a trip to Breckinridge to ski with some family. I didn't use my DLSR as much as I should've. I only remember posting one of the photos I took while on the trip. I mostly used my drone, which I ended up getting stuck in a tree for a couple hours, but that's a different story. After we arrived back in cold, grey, and dismal Pittsburgh with no snow, ironically I started to take out my camera and shoot. After I started exploring more with photography, my instagram became almost exclusively DLSR photography. I had stopped using my drone almost all together.

Months go by, I am taking photos of beaches, lightning, animals, rivers, cities, and sunsets, but then I start to think. Sure, these pictures are pretty, sure they would make a good background picture or a screensaver, but what does it mean? Up to this point I have considered myself somewhat of an artist, but was it art? Or was it just some pretty pictures, that could be recreated by some joe-shmo with couple hundred bucks in his pocket?

I started to think this while I was on a plane back home from Paris while editing my photos. I thought twice about editing and posting the pictures, but I did it anyway since my Instagram was somewhat inactive for a month. I wanted to try to take meaningful photos, but I didn't know how. I took my thoughts to the internet to try to seek some sort of guide to creating meaningful photography. All I got was people stating their opinions on how there are two types of photography, the meaningful art version, and the "pretty picture" version.

I had found myself lost in the sea of photographers that take "pretty pictures" that never really have any underlying meaning or message. I still find myself swimming in that sea while posting pictures from my trip, which was a month ago. I want to get out, swim to shore, but it seems that nobody wants to help pull me in.

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