Are The Joys Of A Photographer Different From Those Of A Painter?

Certainly in certain instances for the photographer outside a studio environment there is the thrill of the unexpected, the thrill of the hunt and the thrill of luck.

No dreaded blank canvas staring at you. On the other hand, painting or drawing has a lot of freedom - you can create anything from nothing.

Well Jessica I am a photographer who can spend hours in front of a computer screen - so quite similar. I have to say that I prefer the enjoyment and the buzz of being able to take time crafting an image more than just composing one. I still take plenty of photos but I now get more of my pleasure from what a lot of people might call design rather than the instant nature of a photograph. ( I think it is something to do with age ! )......Peter

Having done both now, (though I haven't got nearly as in depth with the photography) I would say they are different. I can explain the mechanical difference but there is something more than that I can't explain.

I also have to say, it's a very different experience to paint in the studio vs painting outdoors from life.

I take photographs for painting reference and I do love capturing that perfect shot and it does excite me. Painting is still much more exciting and gratifying to me though. It is more challenging because first you have to think the whole process through, lay it out (big challenge) to perfection because a bad drawing makes a bad painting. Next you begin adding undertones, then color. It begins to come alive! You can add elements that you see or just dream up. Then, when it is finally complete, you can sit back, see, smell and touch what you have created with your hands. That brings me joy but I am a painter above everything else.

I mostly paint plein air, but photography has supplied me, in the past, with tons of reference material for future studio paintings.

Since being on FAA I have started offering my photography for sale as well.

I think I do get the same joy and excitement from both but the difference is this.

With photography it is, for the most part, a very quick recognition of a good or worthy subject and a relatively quick "capture" of it. I don't do any Photoshop or manipulation of the photo except for very minor things like turning a color photo into a sepia toned.

Whereas with a painting, especially plein air, it is a much more drawn out (no pun intended) process that almost always entails one or more quick sketches of the subject to determine the best composition, lighting etc. And then there is anywhere from one to several hours of painting ( see my painting "T-28 Needs TLC" in which I returned to the site 12 times to get the same lighting at that particular time of day) and even then I usually take the work back to my studio and tweak it for small corrections to improve it. Only then do I get the complete joy and excitement of the finished painting.

Bill Tomsa

http://billtomsa.blogspot.com/

I feel your joy when I go to a garden or park to take photos for my paintings. By the time I get down to painting what I have referenced I have already put several days into the composition and layout. I lay out a draft like an engineer. When I am in front of my easel it is hard work, self doubt, and ten thousand mind cheerleaders chanting " You can do it! You can do it! You can!"
When I finish it never is as good as I want. I put it away for a week and go back and look with fresh eyes and say " Darn girl, not bad".

Photography gets me out of the house. I am a wanderer. It's the perfect combination.

Jessica, are you harboring a secret desire to paint? A lot of your images have a painterly feel.

I am a painter.
I also am a fauxtographer.
It's like comparing apples and oranges...waaaay different thrills

Apropos description of your images Marlene !


The joys of each are very different for me. And, I can go so far as to say, the joys of sculpture are different than painting. To make it simple, it is not just the finished product but the process that brings unique challenges and therefore unique delight.

Photography is stimulus pouring into your head. Painting is stimulus coming out of your head. Both are exciting

Marlene Burns
"It's like comparing apples and oranges...waaaay different thrills"

Gee, Marlene...I get pretty much the same thrill whether I'm eating an apple OR an orange!
Now GRAPES that's a whole different story!! :-)

Bill Tomsa

http://billtomsa.blogspot.com/

Very interesting question. I paint and take photos and both gave me much joys. For me the excitement of capture the unexpected moment seem a short term one. However with paintings which required more thinking, planning and time to create the satisfactions last longer.

I'm a scavenger, creating "Art" be reassembling the matter I discover and retrieve

I'm closer to a Photographer.than a Painter.

I go out on a mission to find/capture those treasures no one else sees or cares about.

Take my booty back, work on it and create pieces that everyone now sees and in one way or another cares about.

I thought about that while I completed my residency in July in the Artist in Residence program at Petrified Forest National Park. We only have 2 weeks for our residency, and I was able to hike to so many places early in the morning and late in the evening and accomplish my art.

Painters, quilters and other artists aren't so lucky because their medium isn't as portable as mine, so they didn't have as much time to hike and explore as I did. I was also able to get away from the crowds, while they ATTRACTED attention while doing their thing.
I sorta felt bad for them, they missed out on all the good places in the park - off the beaten path.

I do both. There is a joy in creating a good image no matter how its done. The universe likes novelty, and creativity. The joy is when we feel connected. The joy is in creating for me and similar in both genres.

Melany, I have hiked considerable distances with my painting gear, it is possible, some outdoors painters just haven't learned how to economize. I bet my setup for small paintings actually weighs less than your camera equipment, though it might be a bit bulkier. However it does take considerably longer to paint even an 8" X 10" painting than to take photos. If my goal is just information gathering I'll take my sketching supplies, I can do a sketch that captures what I like and how I feel about something in as little as ten minutes, of course I'll have the "point and shoot" with me to catch all the extra details.

Funny, Bill! My biggest fruit thrill is a very ripe mango.....

Sooooo messy, Marlene.

Hard to say - especially since many of my photographs undergo significant post processing, and sometimes digital painting!

I love them both!!

Sometimes it is nice not to have to start with a totally blank canvas!!

absolutely! I am full of excitement when I have a new canvas. I am a plien air painter so I hunt for the perfect subject just like a photographer but, instead of capturing on a camera, I capture it on a canvas.

@Nikki
Slice off a half and scoop it out with a spoon....;)

I've been doing both, I enjoy painting, but struggle sometimes for sure. At the same time I like the fast result from the camera :D!

I think the way I work gives me the best of both worlds. Capturing a RAW image gives me the fun of searching for a subject, composing the scene and setting up the camera. After that, I spend days at the computer, working on the image until I get it looking the way I want it.

I am reading book " On Photography" by Susan Sontag at that moment. ( I could answer after this book finished)

I felt in my heart different though I did not paint much.
I painted water colour when I was young now after 50 I am thinking to paint again in the near future.

Alfred Ng answer you question I think.

I think photo can change the public opinion on the social issues. Some painters these days copy from their photos to paint.
I got some photos collected for painting in the future.

In another thread, I just said I'm the kind of guy building a landscape in my head before even going to the shooting place... Of course I'm only doing that for places that I know because I kept track of best shooting spots depending on weather conditions.

The excitement is at maximum when I arrive at shooting place and when I can say : "Yes ! that's it !"

Reflecting on a photograph or canvas what you have in your head is an outstanding feeling...

You know, I think one big difference between painting and photography is a photographer has a raw image so at any given time they can decide to do something different with their image. A painter creates a fixed image. I am kind of stuck with the outcome. I look at older paintings sometimes and think how I could have done something differently. I can always build on my experience and create something new with the knowledge that I gained but the painting is what it is. If a photographer looked back on their photos ten years later with new evolved eyes...maybe new skills...they could go back in and edit.

Leslie,
What stops a painter from going back to a painting and changing it?
That happens all the time.

"Jessica, are you harboring a secret desire to paint? A lot of your images have a painterly feel." Edward You guess it!

My photos do have a painterly feel, but if I could paint it would be abstract! I admire the styles of: Marlene Burns, Jane Davies, Michel Keck, Linda Woods, Ruth Palmer and Laura Lein-Svencner just to name a few here.

"....preparing for a shoot"

Preparing to create art on canvas is not a joy. The joy is after the piece is completed....sometimes.

Marlene,

Well for one thing everything is sold. And there is the issues of final varnish. Details also. How would I re-position sunlight on a bird or petal? Abstract art maybe you can but not realism. At least not in "Leslie's world" :D I do learn from the past and I have also learned that if I am uncomfortable with any aspect of a painting in the development stages to just scrap it and not go forward. Sometimes that is really hard because I have a lot of time in the planning stages so it bites to loose time.

There is a certain joy in bringing to life something that only exists in your mind and nowhere else! Creating something striking with your bare hands.

Painting has survived to this day since the caves for a reason

Second posting for my comments...
Leslie, it might be an interesting exercise to not varnish a painting and keep it around, so ou can experience the ability to make changes as you do in your photographs ;)
Danl, you mention prep and finished product, but what about the thrill of the process itself of paining?

Funny, I have often wondered the same thing, but from a painters perspective. I'm with Phyllis on this one. I often take my own reference photos, which excites me when I get the shot I'm looking for, but only because I know I'm going to be turning it into a painting after. I have done some photography as well and love it, it gives me a thrill when I get the shot of something that is hard to capture but it just doesn't hold my interest the same way.

Marlene-

I consider the "process" to walking. Don't think about putting one foot in front of the other. Just keep moving. You'll eventually get to where you want to be. Once there, you may experience "joy"...or not.

Interesting that painters have such different opinions of the process itself......
For me, the product is a perk.
If it's good, great! I put it up for sale.
If not, I use it for under painting.....
But, by being thrilled during the process phase, I'm guaranteed joy, regardless of the outcome.

I can't tell you how many times I've taken photos intended for painting reference, download them to the computer a few days later and look though them and end up scratching my head over many of them wondering why in the world I took those photos. I must have been excited about something when I was there or I wouldn't have taken the photo. Of course painters are usually taking photos for different reasons that photographers. I'm not really looking to capture a scene, I'm looking to get the general idea and details so I have reference material to create my own composition. I never copy a photo. This is also one reason I do a lot of sketching and painting on location, to capture how the scene makes me feel in a way a camera just can't. I've admittedly only done two fine art photography excursions but my biggest frustration with it is finding scenes that don't have major compositional issues that wouldn't take many hours on a computer to fix if it's fixable at all. I already spend too much time on the computer.

The joy for a painter comes from to make up his own motifs...

Funny you should ask that, because I've been thinking about how I love both, but because painting/drawing is so much more time-consuming, I have much more photography to show than artwork. I also base my paintings on photos I took, ...mostly... except for the abstract!
I love the ability to express myself that particularly abstract art affords.
As for photography, I love the challenges of finding the perfect lighting, perspective and focus.
Now from the other point of view - that is the observer of art or photos - I'd much rather look at art. I like to imagine what was in the artist's head.

Another thing about photo and painting is most photographer do not print out every photos they shot and the size of the print vs the size of the actual painting. Looking at an actual painting the feeling is somehow different from looking at the photo from the computer screen or a print.

"Is there a special joy in capturing a moment?"

Yes, there is, for me anyway. Perhaps that's one of the main things photography and painting/drawing, and all of the arts, have in common. Moment-capturing.

Painting and photography aren't necessarily about moments that exist in reality. The artistry is sometimes in making the photograph or the painted image capture a moment that is unique to the painting or photo.

The joy of anticipation, and preparation: I get excited about creating an image I see in my head, setting up a still life, getting out the art supplies, figuring out which paints I plan to use. Other times the prep work is annoying and I just want to get it done as quickly as possible so I can start painting, and get on with doing whatever aspect of the prospective painting is engaging my brain at the moment.

I like being outside and moving around, so that's how I photograph. Emphasize moving in that comment.

Edward:

"No dreaded blank canvas staring at you."

Blank canvases are easy to please -- all you need to do to make them happy is give them a new coat of paint.

Cameras are much more scary. Cameras spend most of their time thinking up ways to destroy paintings. I know this from experience. They're the kind of contraption that will blackmail you by taking horrible embarrassing pictures if you don't buy them all kinds of expensive filters and attachments, and silver umbrellas, and fancy lights. Watch out for cameras, they're bad news. Oh, and don't let them anywhere near your computer. If your camera and your computer team up against you, you're done for. You'll never have a moment's peace again.

Out and about - not photography - painting. A lot of my work is outside - usually on paper - sometimes up to A1 size - occasionally on a ledge/wall - often on the ground ( gouache picks up dust, and dirt - but I suppose it makies the painting more authentic.) Sometimes they're finished pieces - sometime studies for studio work.
A lot "pleine aire" and "alla prima" - all thats missing is me "au naturelle" (lots of outside and all-in-one-go. all thatīs missing is me in my birthday-suit).