What does “photo” in photographer mean?
Photo is a shorted form of photon or light. What we as photographers use to create our art.
Graphy is the art of drawing or image creation. This doesn’t mean just still images.
80+ years ago film and photography was accessible only to a handful of people. Then around 40 years ago film became popular and cameras abundant in various formats allowing anyone to take photos on a poorer quality medium over the commercial quality. I remember the little drive up buildings where you could drop off your film for 2-day processing, that was quick turn around. Then 20 years ago the notion of digital images come to the public conscious and 10 years later it became a slightly expensive but very prolific and we soon saw the downfall of film and those little drive up buildings. Today you can get a mobile phone that has a camera in it with enough megapixels to rival the grain of any film produced. I know that the lens quality is not the same, but that’s not the issue. This has caused film to become a cottage market. The only thing that has changed is the medium.
In much the same way commercial photographers have had to adapt to the changing medium and the way people want to consume information. Forty years ago there were only a handful of TV stations but thousands of printed magazines and newspapers. News photographers used black and white film because it was less expensive to develop and the newspapers only printed black ink. High end commercial photography required color for the glossy printing in magazines. Now those magazines and newspapers have had to move their markets to the Internet (the go to place for all information) and have had to adapt to consumer desires. There is a greater demand than ever for still images, but coupled with that is the demand for the story to be told to the consumer in the form of video. So the still cameras have evolved to capture motion and the commercial photographer is now required to capture video as well as still image
There will always be a place for iconic photography. That one image that strikes a chord in the viewer to draw their attention to the article or video attached. The same is true with portrait photographers are now faced with consumers wanting photos on a disk for facebook, yet there will still be a need for large framed photos as artwork. As photographers we now have new mediums to consider. And in order to excel as photographers we have to consider that the word photo in photographer no longer means a physical image printed on archival quality paper. Photographer means an individual who is skilled at capturing light and telling a story with either a single or many images.
Should photographers then change the name of our companies and businesses to exchange the word photography and photographer to something more appropriate? I am at that point now that I have been doing just as much photography as videography. So in the upcoming weeks the site will change with a slightly different name. It’s only purpose is for customers to better understand what I do and can do for them. But should I still refer to myself as the Time and time photographer? It is after all where I started, even if my business will be changing from Phil Morris Photography to Morris Media Group.
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I am a top photographer in the Mocksville, North Carolina Professional Photographers guide on MarketingTool.com.
Congratulations on the name change and good luck with it. I’d like to interject something about the new name. “Media Group,” at least to my ear, says more than just either photography or videography. I think of full-fledged graphic design. As anyone who has seen my website would attest, I am a design flop, even if I do occasionally have an eye for a photograph. I can’t imagine that if I were to start to do this to support a meager lifestyle that I’d ever dare to say “media.”
In seeing your work, Phil, you have the skills to support using that word. May the power of the word lend itself to your continuing and improving success!
Dear Phil,
You give some nice tips about photography. However your explanations are sometimes wrong. Also the word ‘photo’ is ancient Greek for ‘light’. A ‘photograph’ is a drawing (‘graph’) made with light.
Photons are the particles associated with light and they were discovered about 3 or 4 millenia after the language was matured. I’m sure ‘light’ was one of the first words they had.
I normally don’t correct people like this but it’s just frustrating that some pretty good tips get marred by bad backgroundinformation.
cheers from my sunny holidays in Greece,
Bas
My intent was not to give a full greek lesson on the origins of the work photography. Sometimes I forget that my audience is a bit more wide spread than my neighborhood. Both photo and photon are derivatives of the Greek word phos (φῶς) meaning light. And graphy comes from graphē (γραφή) meaning to draw or write. My only point was that photograph is “light drawing.” Light drawing is much more broad than just what most people consider to be “photography.” I’m sorry if my over simplification detracted from the point of the article being that we as photographers are called upon to do much more than just “take” pictures.