Dannj

Yeah! Why is that?

Dannj

I think it’s for the same reason some folks like to say biscotti instead of cookie😳

xt2 Loc: British Columbia, Canada

I don't.

Cheers!

Howard5252 Loc: New York / Florida (now)

I thought it did sort of leave the original topic, what a shame. BTW did you know that in the word fresnel (as in fresnel lens), the letter s is silent? :-) :-) :-0 :-)

Bunko.T Loc: Western Australia.

For me it’s a lot shorter to type than the big word. Even type Pics sometimes.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

Some truth to that. The first time I remember encountering the usage was in photography classes in art school.

Dannj

I knew that!!!! Really!!!!!

Actually, I think it’s spelled this way so it can include the palindromic reference to “lens”. Leaving the “s” out wouldn’t make any sense. I mean, what the heck is a “Len”??

shangyrhee Loc: Nashville TN to Sacramento CA

Image evokes more subjective & artistic notion than photo for me. Shang

eugenehinds

Sounds right to me. Photograph is specific, images not.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Nope, It's named for its developer, Augustin-Jean Fresnel. He was a French physicist who developed the fresnel lens to improve the visibility of lighthouse lanterns. Others had come up with the concept, but he made it work.

Charles 46277 Loc: Fulton County, KY

Nancy, this is a philosophical question (my field). It is also an academic question about the meaning of a word. Most words have synonyms, but they are not exactly the same in meaning--they overlap in meaning. To sort them out we look at two things--first, the historical evolution of the word (which is what the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language does (a gigantic collection of volumes for libraries and universities); and second, the current usage in published work (which is what most American dictionaries do), and this can be sorted by the use of scholars or serious writers, versus the more common uses by normal people.

"Photograph" was invented when cameras were invented, from the Greek for "light" and "writing." They wanted a new word for a new thing. The picture was created by light itself on film, not by the artist in the same sense or process of drawing or painting a picture. "Picture," is a word for drawings, paintings, photographs, and mental ideas (we picture something in our minds). I would say "image" refers to what a picture shows us, and it can be interpreted by the artist--"my image of Half Dome in Yellowstone Park," can be different from your image of the same mountain, and the word can refer to my photo, my drawing, my painting--or it can refer to my conception of that object (the image I had in mind when I created the picture).

When artists and critics refer to "image," they probably mean the physical representation that is presented to us--the thing that is called an artwork, and the thing that can be bought and sold. That may be a slight misuse of the more scholarly use. Plato started all this with his theory of ideas, and now we have 2000 years of footnotes to Plato. Plato's myth of the Cave asked us to imagine a cave where people are chained to their chairs facing a wall, and all they can ever see is images projected on that wall by puppeteers--people who hold up objects in front of a light, which then makes shadows for the prisoners to see on the wall. "We are like them," Plato says, with a sort of grim foreboding, because we are prone to accept the view of reality that we see, and that can be deceptive when deceivers are at work (which is often). Indeed, the deceivers of the world count on this gullibility. If we sit in front of a computer (or TV) all day thinking that is the real world, we are like them.

Sorting out the most exact and precise meaning of our words is a major job of all scholarly work, and to some degree it is important in everyday life, whenever we want to be understood with any degree of precision. Often the choice of words misleads people entirely, because several words always have several meanings--overlapping, but not exactly the same.

In this case, we usually know what people mean when they refer to the images that start in a camera, and I suspect that people who prefer this word (rather than photograph) want to imply that what we see is an artist's creation that began on the occasion of using a camera, but was meant to be created and developed (we used to develop film) according to the ideas of the artist. In everyday use, any of the words for pictures that start with a camera can be understood. Today many people make graphic art by starting with a camera (a photographic process), but they manipulate it so radically that the finished product is not just a photo at all.

FotoHog Loc: on Cloud 9

Photographers use the word "image" because they idolize their photos.
STOP IT YOU SINNERS . . . .

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

I was going to comment on this but found myself tied up on circular reasoning so I decided they’re one and the same. It’s like a light wave and a light particle, no real difference on a sensor.

Dannj

I like to use the French pronunciation, more like “eemahj”. Gives it a little more class.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Now we have to go back to Freedom Photos ...