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Comment by onemoresoop | Hacker News Reader

Why is photography not an art, just because anybody can do it and anybody and their dog can take a photo whenever they want?

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Kind of. I like to quantify a certain threshold of skill and effort before I qualify something as art. For instance, a 4 year old drawing scribbles, I would consider art. There was skill, however minimal involved. It might not be very good, and a photo that you take would certainly be more aesthetically appealing, but one required deliberate craft to create and bring to reality.

I simply find it distasteful to call something created with the click of a button art. Yes it can be beautiful, yes it can capture the highs and lows of humanity. And yes it can be thought provoking, represent artistic intention, years of learning lighting, composition, framing, etc, etc, etc. But at the end, I'd call it a photo, not art.

If photography can be made with the click of a button, drawing can be made with the flick of a pencil. Good photography, like good drawing, does require both effort and skill—usually, if not always, quite a lot more than that of a toddler drawing scribbles.

In fact, a single photograph may require a great deal of time and careful planning to execute (perhaps with a series of concept sketches, lighting plans, and so on to work out the compositional and logistical details).

That's great. And yeah you're right, a drawing with a flick of the pencil probably sucks. But it's still a drawing. It took some level of effort - the less effort, the more it sucks. But in the end, I make art.

For a photo, there might have been effort, but it was taken with a camera. I don't take art using a camera. I take photos.

Ie: I go into Minecraft and build something. That's art. vs. I go into Minecraft and take a photo of something that someone else made. That's a screenshot.

Well, I was responding to your argument that photos are not art because art requires skill and effort. It sounds like you are conceding my point that some photographs take more skill and effort than some drawings that you would consider art—so based on that it seems we are on the same page that your "skill and effort" criterion, by itself, doesn't seem to be able to tell us what is and isn't art.

At this point it sounds like you are simply asserting, without providing an argument, that your position is correct. But I am unclear on what exactly your claim is: is it that (1) no photography is art or that (2) the photographs that you yourself take, as a rule, tend not to be art?

Sure, I can make it more clear. Yes, you're right, it's not just about skill and effort. But I am claiming that for me, no photography is art. I concede that it can be artistic, but not art.

I am indeed asserting, without proof, of my opinion, as I believe we all should. This is my criteria for what is and isn't art: https://w0nder.herokuapp.com/posts/9fjM1tOJO7MWX4fYw3AU2Q==/...

I have seen some people make beautiful screenshots of games in artificially created environments where basically the only reason for the existence of the feature is to make screenshots. Oh and by the way, they were all screenshots of something the game developers made.

Stop motion animation can't be art either because it is just a chain of photos of objects someone else made.

They can be great screenshots, no doubt! Stop motion animation can be great too. I've heard great things about Isle of Dogs, and other stop motion movies from studio Laika. And yeah, they can certainly be artistic.

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