What is photography?

What is photography? Good question, simple answer. Photography is painting with light when translated to English. So, how it happens?

We see the world around us because of the light, if there is no light we see nothing. The light reflects from objects and our eyes capture the light, then our brain processes the information and gives us an image of what we see.

What that has to do with photography? Well, our eyes and brain effectively makes a very advanced camera which gives us 3D images, millions of colors and super high resolution. If we understand how our sight works, we can understand how a camera works.

The eye of the camera is the lens, it gathers the light reflected from objects, then the light ends up on the sensor or film where it is recorded, and finally the processor (in case of a digital camera) or developer (in case of a film) processes the information and gives out an image.
Pretty simple isn't it? But there is something more to it, cameras don't take images themselves, we have to use our mind to get the pictures, and here starts photography - camera plus photographer.

Photographer creates the image, the lens sees it and the camera records it. Now, that is photography in few words.