What is a snapshot?

[P3D Dr. George A. Themelis <DrT-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Of perhaps more interest to me than the question "what is art?" is the 
question "what is a snapshot?"  I offer the following definition:

A snapshot is a picture that meets both of the following requirements:

1. It is taken without much thought or planning.
2. It is of little interest to people other than the maker and his close
   friends or relatives.

The second requirement is needed, IMO, because there are pictures taken 
in a snapshot fashion (quickly, no planning) that are of great public
interest and no one calls them snapshots.  Also, there is nothing wrong
with taking snapshots like one more picture of your first-born.  These 
pictures can have a lot of sentimental value and they are fine to keep 
and treasure but there is little sense in showing them to strangers.  
Also, there can be pictures of the same personal subject (your first-
born) that are great pictures worth exhibiting.

The subject was discussed a year and a half ago after I posted the
following story:  The assignment in Detroit was "Music".  I had one
picture of my infant niece "playing" the piano.  I climbed on a ladder
to get the right perspective.  Used my Realist and flash and captured
a great look in her face.  It took me one hour of careful work to double
mask the picture and eliminate distracting elements.  The narrower
resulting image showed my niece looking towards the camera with a great
expression.  Her face was at the edge, coming a bit out the window.  Her
fingers were on the piano keys and the piano keyboard was rushing out of 
the window towards the audience, without anything being cut off the edges.

I thought I had a winner with that one.  In a second picture I just put
a few CD's in a Halloween basket from McDonald's and shoot a slide bar
stereo, mounted in 7-p, a pleasant image.  The judges gave the CD picture
the top score of 27 (each judge gave the maximum score of 9), while the
picture of my niece took 19 points one of the lowest scores of the night.
I was surprised but was not going to say anything until a club member
asked why was this lovely picture of the little girl rated so low... 

A discussion followed and the judges said that the picture of the CDs 
had a calendar-like attraction while the picture of the girl was a 
snapshot which showed shadows in the wall from the on-camera flash 
and a wall-plug was distracting in the background.  Honestly, I was
so captivated by the look in the child's face and the keyboard
rushing out of the window that I did not even notice these alleged
distracting elements.

Considering that I had a good idea of what I was trying to achieve that 
night, took great pains to climb higher to get the right perspective 
(irritating my wife BTW), spent considerable time to mask it properly, 
etc., and also the fact that many people liked it, this picture was not 
a snapshot in my mind.  The on-camera flash could not be avoided given 
that I am an amateur photographer and took the picture visiting my 
brother-in-law during Christmas.

There are several lessons to be learned from this story.  One of them
is that it's not enough to take a picture that is not a snapshot, it
also has to look like one!  The other is that some judges might
rush to classify a picture of small child as a snapshot unless if 
other elements (especially the lighting) reveal certain professional
qualities. -- George Themelis


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