Photography is all about creating art in visual medium, which is basically it is the exact same thing with painting. Truth to be told, the word photography itself was created from Greek, phos (means light) and graphe (means drawing), together means drawing (or painting) with light.
If we do quick search in wikipedia, painting means applying colours on to a solid surface, which is simply the same thing like photography. Our camera become the colours producer (by using light), and we print our photos on solid surface (paper, acrylic, bamboo, etc). The other similarity, we can divide painting into some sub-groups like landscape, abstract, portrait, narrative (story telling), emotive, and even there is a sub group called photorealism, make painting as realistic as possible as the scene, just like journalism photography (photography to produce the reflection of true reality).
There are some most important aspect in painting that we should apply as well in photography like composition, colours match, story line, mood/feel, and the relation of two or more objects inside scene. I believe by learn art of painting, we can improve our skill in photography as well.
In street photography, generally I divide into two things: Documenting stories and visual art (read here for more). So far, when I intend to create a “painting” with camera, I always think visual art has suits more to my style, preference and feeling.
In my belief creating visual art is like painting because of some reasons:
Photograph is not always about documenting stories, not always about meaning from moments.
Photograph is not always about clear, sharp, and 100% accurate information.
Photography is not always creating image that able to be processed by 100% logic. It may looks weird visually, but as long as it create a certain mood as the photographer’s imagination, then it is a good art image.
Photography could be all about artistic feeling (the opposite of logic). About the beauty that we captured from reality, turn it into a exquisite work of art that able to delicate (fine texture or structure) and pleasing our eyes and mind.
Photography could be blurry, unclear, too dark, too bright, grainy, weird colours tone, and abstract. Anything that able to translate the imagination of photographer. Everything is fine as long as it create certain mood/feeling as the artist intend to in his mind.
Street photography is like painting where there are two general groups: One with strong story line from moments, while the others are abstract form, line, or colours. Nothing is better than the others, nothing is more artistic than the others, they just have different purpose why being created.
One simple example, we can not force a landscape painter to able to enjoy abstract painting. Same in photography, we can not force someone from different genre to think that the other genres are artistic. Never force our belief into others. Never think that our genre is the only way to create good art image.
Additional notes, we can do both photograph and painting literally everyday. I just read from Eric Kim’s post (read his full article here) that Picasso did create 1-2 arts object a day until he passed away at age 91. That fact was blowing my mind, how persistent he was doing art in his life!
What I like the most about treat photography as painting is: It force me (in good way and gives me inspiration to create image that has certain mood like: peaceful, grim, magical, freedom, pure, etc. It makes me produce photo based on strong feel instead of full 100% technical and precision but feel lifeless and empty.
That is all my thought about painting in photography world. Stay sharp and have fun keep producing our own artistic images. Create images that able to make our own personal feeling overflow our mind.
Keep shooting and stay inspired,
Nico Harold