What is Fine Art Photography?
"Ars longa, vita brevis" ... Hippocrates
The expression means Art is long, life is short. Art is an integral part of human existence since the prehistoric period when man used to draw different figures and events on the cave walls. They used to express their explorations and emotions through their drawings on the cave walls. Since then, man has imbibed art in their life. Art never dies; it remains immortal. The artist dies but his creations remain alive in the human mind through his artworks. Even after the several years of an artist’s death, his artworks evoke the same feeling in the human mind as it did before. An artist remains alive through his artworks.
Human emotions and feelings play a pivotal role in the creation of an artwork. If there’s no emotion or feeling, there’s no art. Artwork is not only a documentation. An artwork always touches a human mind with its aesthetic sensitivity and evokes certain emotions; even if a person cannot fully understand an artwork, it often moves him with its aesthetic qualities. Artists are full of emotions, feelings and sensitivities. They think quite differently from the common people. Their thought process is different; they are more sensitive than the common people towards any kind of emotions.Their interpretation of a subject or an event does not match with the commons.
The term fine art is often associated with any visual art form, i.e., painting, sculpture, photography etc. In fine art the visual artists delve deeper into their own interpretation of a subject. They may represent a real life scene or a situation with their own values of aesthetics. They remain engulfed in pouring out their thoughts and creativity into their artworks.
Likewise, fine art photography is not a mere representation of a real life scene through a camera. The photographer, often called a visual artist if one is involved in practising fine art photography, puts his own aesthetic sensibilities and emotions while producing a photograph. He applies his thought process in the creation of artworks while shooting a scene with his camera, during post-processing and lastly during printing a photograph. Thus through his picture the fine art photographer evokes the same emotions among the viewers that the artist might have felt during process of creating an artwork; for example, a fine art landscape picture takes a viewer to the scene and makes him feel there in the wide vistas of nature.
So in fine art, the artist’s creative vision tells everything in his artwork, whether it’s a painting, sculpture or photography, thus making this form of art one of the hardest forms to understand for the commons. Fine art represents a real world phenomenon in an artistic way. Though the inherent qualities of realism remains intact, the piece of fine art creates sensation and evokes a particular emotion in the minds of the viewers. Thus, fine art never negates the reality instead establishes it with a fine touch of superiority and sensitivity of art. And fine art photography is a part of the process. It suggests its finesse through its photographic artworks.
