danersmiff

[quote=safeman]Weird thoughts come to old people with too much time on their hands.

Should we continue to call ourselves photographers?

Hi Mr. Safeman!!
Here is a real simple answer.

Do you share printed photographs, or digital photographs,or any form of a photograph,
(including abstracts, photoshops, layers, prints, negatives, slides, et al, etc)
with any other human being? (including the hoggers)...

If so, you are a photographer.

This does not demonstrate your level of skill, or how good or bad you are.
You are just a photographer.
Good, bad, or any other adjective, is EARNED.

Now go get your camera, (and quit the philosophy of photography), and BE a photographer.

d2b2 Loc: Catonsville, Maryland, USA

That's very cool! Thanks for sharing.

bpulv Loc: Buena Park, CA

Being a photographer is not about the media (film, sensor, some future type of media), it is about the vision and the image that results. The process inbetween has little to do with the definition of "photographer". Remember, the process necessary to turn a polished sensitized silver plate into a finished Daguerreotype representation of what the photographer pointed the camera at was quite different from the process to accomplish the same type of end result using modern film and processing. The only difference between film and digital from the perspective of the person who takes the picture is the process from that point to the output of a final product; a graphic representation of what the camera saw. It is true that after that fact, the photographic can be altered, but that is nothing new. In the early days of the art, pictures were altered by color tinting. Today we alter the image using software.

So NO! We should not call ourselves anything other than photographers. That is what we do and that is who we are.