What Makes You a Photographer

Learning to Observe

It’s easy to assume that photography begins with a camera, or with technical knowledge, or with the ability to produce striking images. In reality, it begins much earlier, long before the shutter is pressed. What makes you a photographer is not what you use, but how you look.

Seeing is automatic; observing is deliberate. To observe is to slow down and remain present, to resist the impulse to move on too quickly, to look beyond what is immediately apparent. A photographer is, at their core, a curious person, someone who senses that even the most ordinary moment carries weight, that there is always more beneath the surface than what first appears.

Curiosity and Intention

Curiosity opens the door, but creativity determines how that curiosity is shaped. Photography is not about displaying something impressive, but about having something to say. Strong images rarely shout; they suggest. Photography does not explain or narrate in a linear way. Instead, it offers fragments, moments suspended in time that invite the viewer to pause and interpret. Images can illustrate stories, but they never fully tell them. They leave room for ambiguity, for personal meaning, for silence.

A Silent Medium

This is because photography is, by nature, a mute medium. It does not speak for itself. It shows, and in showing, it quietly asks for words, memories, associations, emotions, to complete the image. Only through this dialogue between image and viewer can a photograph truly travel, extending far beyond the moment it was taken.

Selection, Not Truth

Photographs neither lie nor tell the truth. They are not documents in the strict sense, nor are they objective records. They are selections, partial views of the world shaped by presence, timing, and intention. Photography works like a scanner, registering what stands before it, yet it is never neutral. Every photograph is the result of a choice, where to stand, what to include, what to exclude, and when to press the shutter.

Creating a World

In that sense, photography is not about capturing reality, but about interpreting it. When we look, we actively construct a world. When we frame, we decide what exists within it. To photograph is to engage with reality without altering it, to shape meaning through attention rather than intervention.

Perhaps that is what ultimately makes someone a photographer, the ability to observe with intention, to find significance in the everyday, and to understand that a photograph is never a conclusion, but an opening, a quiet invitation to look again.