Why do you take pictures?
"2-22-12 Shimmer"
Clack-click! You depress the shutter button on your camera, otherwise known as the Go Button, and light is transmitted through photons onto your sensor or into your cell phone or onto your celluloid film and you've captured a moment in time. An irascible instant forever rendered as an image born into this world. It's a crazy awesome thing! So why do you do it? Why do you take pictures?! Some do it to tell the news:
Spencer Platt
Wait a minute this one is better:
Stuart Franklin
Some do it to save the world: 
Some click the shutter because it has become an irresistible urge to produce art: 
HCB
To capture and render our surroundings that we find so overwhelmingly beautiful that perhaps it takes this 2d somewhat scientific medium to make sense of it all:
Ansel
others just to "make money money, make money money" (Snoop Dog):
Some random paparazzi shooting Paris
or to influence elections:
Bush eating a kitty
or this:
chest bump
or this:
Romney
some like to shoot sports (although that kind of falls under the category of news reportage):
American fitness instructor Richard Simmons!
or to influence elections:
American fitness instructor Richard Simmons!
to document fashion:
American fitness instructor Richard Simmons!
Allright enough Richard Simmons the American fitness instructor for now but hopefully we'll get back to him soon!
Almost everybody makes pictures of family. Family photos are an invaluable sentimental currency the value of which is appreciated most long after the image was made or especially poignantly after you realize that you lost the original digital file, or your one copy of the picture went the way of the hard drive that just died- I would venture that the most important pictures of all are family photos, like the image of the girlfriend or wife tacked up into the cockpit of the airman in those old war movies. Look at this crazy classic shot! (photographer unknown):
Or a picture of your favorite dog ever: my dog Grover!
Grover the Dog
or My Ma and Dad!:
Mom and Dad 2011 Acadia National Park, Maine
I started really making pictures back in the year 2000 after it occurred to me how much life was passing me by without any visual verification of the moments ever actually happening, so I went out and bought an 800 dollar 3 megapixel digital point-and shooter which I totally loved and used incessantly up until the point it broke in my fervor. That cheesy paperweight is still around here somewhere.. I loved every moment with that cammy, it was kind of worth every penny as an introduction to making pictures. Now 12 years later I like to make pictures in a way that I've been trying to find for the last 12 years and it's something that I hope and fully expect to love and keep yearning to achieve as much 24 years from now as 12 years ago, a lifetimes pursuit. I like to make pictures to create a work of vision that expresses my sensibilities, to make content that the world can enjoy in some vague way, to make something- instead of just being, to do my part in adding to the images that represent our life. I don't mean that to sound too superfluous or grand, but really it is an important consideration! Allright, enough of me.
Now go make some pictures! And when your wife or girlfriend or husband or boyfriend complains that you are pointing the lens at them, tell them they'll appreciate it later. Tell them to look at how happy Richard Simmons the American fitness instructor is to be photographed! Tell them that this is very important! Tell them you are doing your duty in creating pictures that will save the world! Have a good one fellas and thanks for looking- Nate.
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