Art? Really? Perhaps only at times.

This will hopefully irate those pretentious fools who call themselves "photographers" and think of themselves as "artists." Really? An expensive camera doesn't make one a photographer nor an artist. The whole of photography as "art" is still a moot point. The jury has not come out yet.
Mow that I have taken this off my chest, and having taken a deep breath, I can go on.
What gets me totally nuts is those who call themselves "fine art photographers" and practice "fine art photography." What is this kind of photography? Just because one uses a large format camera or nowadays, a medium format digital camera with a ridiculous number of mega pixels and takes some panorama, that particular shot isn't necessarily fine art or even art. Just because one spends countless hours using photoshop creating endless layers and adjustments, the result isn't necessarily a work of art. So the sad truth to these pretentious self inflated types is that photography is at times the perfect "accidental art." It's really too easy to take great photos and if these photos are more and more so naturalistic, due to better and better sensors, this mimicking of nature is NOT art! It's imitation. Art is something else. Perhaps I am a mediocrity but in my many years learning this craft; having shot all formats from large format view cameras to the latest digital gear and having spent 33 years in the darkroom, the number of photographs I have taken and printed that approach "art" is very small. I dare say that with digital anyone can call himself an artist but he will only fool himself. This sort of discussion came up once while I was with my mentor Josef Breittenbach. We were discussing the new cameras that we had at that i.e. wide open focus and automatic lenses - way before auto focus - but had good light meters. He said "that even though it gets easier and easier to take photos, you can still count the great photographers with the fingers of one hand." I rest my case.