Images of mine like this one show something beyond the photography medium they exist within. It shows relationship and storytelling within a frame that just happen to be captured with a camera.
It feels like a badge of honor to call myself a photographer. At least it used to before I thought about it more and then heard it behind defined. A photographer is, simply put someone that takes photographs. As an artist, I get to choose to create photographs and I just so happen to use a camera to do that.
I am not a camera operator. I know how to use a camera and it helps me as a tool to get the creative process transcribed into a visual representation of what my mind’s eye saw in the first place. I could just as easily be using a different medium, but I chose photography because it happens to fit my workflow and vision.
The medium should never be what fully describes me or my work. As an artist, I have the ability to create and make something my own, regardless of what tools I use. I balance my vision as an artist with my technical skills behind a camera in order to create the work I have and continue to do.
Technically, I am both today. I am a photographer at a technical level, and on a creative level I am an artist. The medium I choose to continue to define myself through as an artist is photography. I am not just a photographer. I am an artist.