davyboy Loc: Anoka Mn.

Is a slow shot half way between a snapshot and a photograph?

scubadoc Loc: Sarasota, FL

A snapshot is usually only of interest to the person behind the camera and the person in the snapshot. A photograph can tell a story and should be of interest to anyone who sees it, regardless of the medium.

Bill P

The best answer is as long as needed. It might be hours for an expansive landscape, or days for a big studio shot of Italian supercar, to nanoseconds for a great street photo. Great street is mainly luck. So I guess that hours of fruitless strolling about could be considered planning.

From what I've seen, most planning is overplanning by the kind of people that sit and stew about what could go wrong.

AirWalter Loc: Tipp City, Ohio

If every photo has to be cooked to finality with editing software what good is the term photographer? Maybe a better title would be photographer/painter or photographer/artist.

Vince68 Loc: Wappingers Falls, NY

A snapshot to me is if I just take a photo with no planning or thinking about it at all... spur of the moment, see something and shoot it. Many photos I took years ago were taken exactly like that. I just shot them without any thought, such as vacation shots, documenting where I was. Now, with shots like that, I at least think about the scene, composition, light, etc. I still consider them snapshots, but I thought about them a little before pressing the shutter.

I have been taking an online class by Bryan Peterson. There have been weekly assignments given, based on what he wants us to photograph. So planning where and what I am going to shoot is involved in order to complete the assignment. I can't say exactly how long it took me to plan each shot, but I did not just go out with my camera and take random shots, thats for sure. I thought about where I was going before I went out, I looked at the scenes before shooting, took some test shots, then took the shots I planned on using.

Call them what you want, snapshot, pic, photograph, etc. Everyone has their own thoughts on this, as evidenced by the responses to the OP. Bottom line, do what please you and makes YOU happy.

anotherview Loc: California

I sense the OP meant to describe his own style of taking pictures, as doing snapshots.

AirWalter Loc: Tipp City, Ohio

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

I guess you weren't around for the film and darkroom era. Photographs have been edited and manipulated way before digital cameras and software came along. I never considered a film photograph finished until I made the most out of it in the darkroom.

Bill P

That goes for both of us, but our darkroom manipulations were generally more simple and direct that the more complex processes of PS.

Bill P

Or photographer/computer technician.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

The OP's premise is that all photographs are snapshots. I believe there is a distinction. But I don't feel planned shots are inherently better than shapshots. Snapshots have gotten a bad rap because most inexperienced and novice photographers take them and do them badly. But experienced photographers do take snapshots, and they can be every bit as good as planned shots, sometimes better because of the spontaneity. I don't buy the idea that snapshots are not photographs until they reach a certain level of planning or quality. It is just a style of shooting photographs. There is even a fine art photography genre known as Snapshot Aesthetic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapshot_aesthetic

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

That was probably true of most photographers, but there were some photographers who did things in the darkroom you would swear had to be Photoshop, like Jerry Uelsmann:

https://www.uelsmann.net

revhen Loc: By the beautiful Hudson

Robert Capa's D-Day photos were the worst snapshots but they became classic photographs because they captured the reality of the day.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

My guess would be the photograph police.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States