Midnight Moon is a new image that proved to be a favorite among visitors during the Little Italy Art Walk. What surprised me most was how many people wanted to stop and talk about Midnight Moon, about the Cold Supermoon visible during the art walk (it turns out there are many moon worshipers). I loved hearing how they described it and how it made them feel.
Midnight Moon began as a simple photograph I took last winter, on a day of heavy snowfall when the air felt electric from the cold. The finished image has traveled far from that original photo. I worked on it off and on during the year, coaxing it into the visual story I wanted to tell.
I often find myself in conversations about photography—sometimes about my work specifically, and sometimes about photography in general. Some people want to know about technique and how I “took the picture.” Others comment on the atmospheric quality of an image like this one, and want to understand how it was made.
The more these conversations happen, the more I see myself as an artist, something I struggle to believe. I’ve identified as a photographer—and my work as photography—for years, because that’s where I started and because my tools haven’t changed. I still use a camera, still bring my files into Lightroom, and still fall into the familiar rhythm of editing. Yet the word photographer carries certain expectations for many non-photographers, and increasingly, that’s not the kind of photography I’m interested in practicing.
Nearly everyone takes pictures now, and many assume that creating an image like the ones in the gallery (or the work they see online) is simply a matter of pressing the shutter. I’ve encountered thinly veiled hostility when I explain that yes, the image is a photograph—one I took—and then worked with creatively until it reflected the experience or story I wanted to tell.
Not everyone can draw or paint, and people don’t (usually) ask painters to explain how they made something or what materials they used. But because nearly everyone takes photos with their phones, there’s often a disconnect in understanding the difference between casual picture-taking and the work of a photographer or visual artist.
I have a simple way of thinking about that distinction. I cook. I use many of the same ingredients and tools as a chef, but I am not a chef—not even close.
I follow the work of many extraordinary photographers, and I understand that my work is not on the same level as theirs. Still, I don’t assume they’ve “cheated” or created their images with AI.
Most people think images begin and end with the camera, so they ask what camera was used to take it. I point out that some of the images hanging were taken with a camera with fewer megapixels than their iPhone, and most phones have more than adequate cameras to make and print photos.
While the camera provides the raw material (and many creative techniques are done in camera) of the substance of a moment or place, the finished piece comes from somewhere else entirely. Editing has become less about correction and more about shaping, refining, and interpreting. The image becomes a place where memory, intuition, and feeling carry more weight than the technical aspects of photography.
They may not be asking whether a scene is “real”; maybe they are responding to something broader and personal to them.
The more in-depth these conversations become, the more limiting (and false) the word photographer feels. While it’s accurate to a degree, it doesn’t fully describe the arc of the work or what drives my process. Photography is my language, but it isn’t the whole story. It could be that what I’m doing fits more comfortably within the wider space of visual art, where a photograph is allowed to evolve beyond the initial frame, where interpretation is central, and where the final work is shaped very little by documentation alone.
By the end of the art walk, after hearing people describe what Midnight Moon and other similar photos said to them, I realized I had already crossed that line without noticing. My work has been changing for some time, quietly and organically, and those conversations simply brought it into sharper focus.
I haven’t left photography behind at all. I’m only wanting to expand beyond the narrow idea of what a photograph “should” be. Maybe I’m more of a visual artist who happens to use a camera, and Midnight Moon feels like a clear expression of that—a marker of where my work has been heading all along, and where I want it to continue to go.
