I’m not talking copyright here but rather, when is a photo about your vision and when it is just recording someone else’s. I think that when you take a photo of something someone else created it’s probably more about the recording process than that the result is truly art. Take this image below – it’s a piece of building art that I photographed but really, beyond placing myself in position to capture the image I didn’t contribute any of my vision to the result.
However, the image at the top of this post is something else indeed. Here the same piece of art appears but it looks very different. I had to find this image – it was a reflection in the windows of a building across the street. Here I made a creative choice about what I captured and what I left out, where the reflection appeared and how the result would look. I contributed my artist’s vision to the photograph.
Ask yourself next time you’re out photographing – are you recording someone else’s work or creating your own?
The second photo is simply amazing!