There are about as many varieties of art photography as there are photographers. Although you could probably argue that your beach vacation snapshots could be called art, you won’t find a gallery to hang them. But if you did something extremely different and interesting with your beach photograph, such as go to a beach entirely made up of different colored beach balls rather than a real beach, then that might qualify as art photography. Let’s look at some of the varieties seen in galleries today.

Photojournalism

This kind of art photography is much harder than it first sounds like. How many college students do you know have a poster of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue or of that one lone Chinese demonstrator who stopped a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square? Those photos are art. They tell far more stories than the actual newspaper stories they were originally used to illustrate.

The art of photojournalism lies partially in being in the right place at the right time but also choosing which photo to select. It has to capture the essence of a situation or a story with one image. This kind of art photography is sort of a visual haiku.

Digital Tricks

You don’t need a fancy photography studio in order to create art photography. You do need a computer and an excellent image program, such as PhotoShop. There, you take a photograph as the framework for which your artistic expression is loosened. For some, the challenge is in making a fake photograph look identical to a real photograph. Some make a real photograph as beautiful as possible. The sky’s the limit with this type of art photography.

Portraits

The bread and butter of a professional photographer’s trade is in portraits - of people, pets, buildings or whatever. The usual portrait, although framed and hung on a wall, is not often considered art photography. The art is when these portraits are taken just left of center. Instead of stiff poses looking artificially perfect, another approach is taken.

Instead of the usual portrait of a little girl in a dress, the photographer could mount a ladder and look down on the girl spinning in play. That would be art photography, even though it may be hard to tell the features of the little girl. It is still a portrait, but captures more about the girl than just what she looked like on a given day.

Most people’s photographs will never be mistaken for art photography. Because cameras are available to most people, they might not consider photography worth of being hung up in a museum. All you have to do is point and shoot, right? Not exactly. Walking through a photography gallery or wing at your local museum is nothing like having to endure your friend’s slides of Bermuda.

Telling A Story

Think about the most memorable photograph you have ever seen - whether in the newspaper, in a book or in photography gallery. What was is that was so special? For a lot of people, great photographs tell entire stories or reveal entire lives in one image. Although these pictures can be taken by accident, often they are taken through the eyes of someone with a story to tell. Walking through a photography gallery is a bit like paging through a short story anthology.

The images selected to hang in a photography gallery aren’t just interesting compositions or shapes. They might be entirely what you think a bad picture would be. Images in Photography galleries can be blurred, unfocused, off-center or poorly lit. But the images in a photography gallery not only show the story of what that image is about and, most tellingly, they tell the story of the photographer behind the lens.

Perception Through The Lens

We all long to express ourselves in some way. Many people choose to express themselves through the use of the arts. Almost all professional photographers develop their own photographs in order to ensure you see what they see. Words can easily be misinterpreted and forgotten. But images, such as the ones in a photography gallery, stay in your mind for a very long time.

We see this all the time in advertising photographs (which sometimes do pop up in a photography gallery or two). You are meant to see only the effects that one product or service brings. The picture doesn’t show you all of the problems the employees might be having or the effect the product or service might have on the environment. We only see the positive, which can be done in surprisingly ingenious and quirky ways.

A photography gallery might blur the line between real life and art, but that is its goal. Despite all of the technology and skill into every image, the ultimate interpreter of each picture is you. Your input is the last sentence in the story.