I tend to think the world of technology has changed the world of photography. Hugely changed in many respects. We are now developing into a different creative form of imagery, used in both good and bad ways. Just by using images as memes makes it a more diversified creative medium, or creative manipulation as another example, switching heads and bodies and backgrounds like a round with paper dolls. Cameras have also become much more user-friendly, with a wide range of possibilities for the average consumer, including phones.
The rush of freeway traffic
When it was film and not digital, I was more judicious about taking photographs, learning about settings, composition, ISO, speed, and using them with an educated, careful eye. Film and processing was expensive. Our tools have changed. Such as using photo processing software and phone apps. We used chemicals and settings and certain types of cameras, certain types of filters, processing equipment, perhaps creative filters we designed ourselves. And the audience and places to share images are much more global.
Today, we have different tools, larger audiences, and photography is becoming a very different type of art form than what we remember it to be. In some respects I love that I can be more creative and design differently. In others, I fondly remember the judiciousness of film imagery.
Like most mediums of art, photography is individual. As when I write fiction, I have one thing in my mind about what that story is. The reader takes away something else. It comes from different life experiences and perspective.
For me, it isn’t simply about taking a “perfect” photo. It’s about the art of photography,
Song sparrow giving us a beautiful seranade
it’s about nature and environment, and how I perceive something. I prefer macro to landscape, I prefer intimate, unguarded moments with people and places rather than portraiture. Photography is multi-stepped: it’s about choosing the subject, about the taking of the picture, as well as the processing of the images, be that film or digital. Photography is about the composition in your mind, the colors, the shapes, the imagery and how you want to represent what you see. It’s about playing with settings, it’s about capturing the emotion and wonder and peace or excitement of that moment and what I, as the photographer, find exciting about that visualization.
Be it a painter, a photographer, a writer, creativity is about personal perception. Representing a world that we see, and sharing that perception with others.
But there is another side to taking photographs. Because it’s become so easy to take picttures at every turn, 
it’s also about copyrights and personal privacy, and the ethics of taking photographs and being sensitive about what I take pictures of, respecting the space of people or animals, places, and being educated on practicing this art form.
I love taking pictures, I love being out in nature, surrounded by so much beauty and passion and inspiration. I can’t help wanting to capture a moment, of sharing that moment. See what I see in a way I see it. My own mind’s eye.
The world is a beautiful place, filled with moments worth sharing.
TA Gallup Photography 