I take a lot of photos. LOTS. I love the fact that my Digital camera increments my photos by one each time I take one. On my old camera I took something like 3000 pictures over the two or three years I was using it. This is a bit approximate.

I’ve had my newer camera for 6 months. It’s much better quality than my old one and I’ve taken something like 5000 photos since I got it.

As I sort through all of these images I generally subconsciously sort of classify them into one of three main categories; Photographs, Pictures, Snapshots.

Here’s a short breakdown of what qualifies a photo for each of these classifications. Neither is necessarily a superior category to the other and each has their own advantages.

Photographs

We’ll start with Photos or Photographs. Generally speaking these are images that I feel are of a slightly higher caliber composition wise. They aren’t the ones that are the most crisp and clear necessarily, in fact many of them are deliberately not so. When I shoot film these days I generally go for the end result of a Photograph.

Some example photographs from my Flickr stream are below with an explanation as to why I call them Photographs.

	This is a photo due to it’s stylized look. The stark brown tones contrast nicely with the blue sky. Everything skews off to the left side of the photo. The fact that part of the photo has been motion blurred by my driving at the time. These all are little quirks that make me classify this as a Photograph.I suppose I should mention that a Photograph’s purpose generally conveys some sort of emotion or thought. This particular photo would convey some sense of speed but also a but of depressing bleakness. At least that’s my opinion.
	Here’s another good example of composition. I absolutely love this photograph. I generally don’t post images of family or people on Flickr but I make exceptions for shots like this. The purple flowers on the tree just seem to explode around my wife’s heat in this shot. It also contrasts very nicely with her dark shirt, white skin, and red hair making her stand out nicely.Also it’s one of the few times I actually managed to get her to give me a good photo. She hates having her picture taken
	Here’s one that is nice due more to it’s composition than it’s colors. The perspective on this shot is really nice. The empty open road coupled with the obvious problem at hand really pushes to tell a story of lonely desperation and frustration. At least that’s my thoughts on the matter.Truth be told the road is pretty busy and I waited a good five minutes or so for the cars to clear out going both ways to make this shot.

Pictures

Pictures make up the bulk of my photography. Generally I’d say the most common for most people would be Snapshots however. Pictures generally are staged out in some way and taken with a purpose of illustration. They aren’t really designed to convey a sense anything but serve to show something for what it is.

I use these a lot for reviews I wright over on Lameazoid.com. Most of those random Transformers pictures I have on my photo stream are classified as “Pictures”. Some examples below, though I don’t have much to say about any of them.

Snapshots are the most common type of image captures with a camera. By anyone. Not necessarily everyone but in an overall sense. These are your birthday shots, your zoo pictures, your trip to the beach. They are illustrative of the activity or even like a Photo but they convey some level of emotion, generally an upbeat one, like a Photograph. They are neither level of extreme however. It’s not really say that the Snapshot conveys the emotion of happiness, more that you see happy people at the birthday party and know it was a good time. It’s a documentation of an even or place that it’s quite as staged out as a Picture.

Example Snapshots