Is Photography Art?

When I was a teenager I didn't consider photography as 'art'- since I thought it was more of a technical pursuit- knowing about aperture, focus and what buttons to press.

I feel very different now though. I see it as using a tool, much like a paintburush, to capture the scene or object in an interesting or personally gratifying way. I'm a very long way from getting the machine to punch out a product I'm happy with, yet, I feel I enjoy the way it makes me 'look' differently- see things in a more or less literal fashion than I used to. 

I was rushing today so only had time to capture the amazing array of daffs on the frontage of some local 1970s blocks of flats. I've twiddled, cropped and twisted but in the end I liked this 'painted' look achieved through messing with the light and saturation. To me it looks like the flats are painted and the flowers are sprayed or spoldged onto the medium of the image.

And as with all of the images on Blip, I think this is art too, well it is to me. This saturated depiction is completely representative of this place, the squareness of the flats against the contrasting sea of friendly yellow faces in the grass- its the way I see it. I think it has an Andy Warholesque feel about it, brash but accurate. 

Each day the pictures we choose, the way we shoot them, the selective crop or tweaks we make present a piece of something no-one else would shape quite the same. That to me is why all photography IS art.