Photographer

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Image:Photographer in Calgary.jpg

A photographer at the Calgary Folk Music Festival

Image:Paparazzi by David Shankbone.jpg

Paparazzi at the Tribeca Film Festival

A photographer is a person who takes a photograph using a camera. A professional photographer uses photography to make a living.

The work of a photographer may be limited to the actual shooting of the camera, or it may include all of the steps in the development of the image up to the presentation of the final product. A photograph may be the work of a single person or of a team; The most common teams are formed of a photographer and a laboratory technician. The laboratory work (photographic processing, image processing, plus other less common techniques) can completely change the appearance of a shot. Post-processing can be an art form in itself, but, the person who took the shot is often more likely to be considered the artist, and the developer an artisan

At the beginning of the photographic era, painters and photographers debated the role of photography in art. If photographers are considered to have "usurped" the exclusive domain of the image from painters, painters were profoundly influenced by the photographic technique, obliging them to better define their domain, subjects, and flexibility of technique. However, certain painters have reduced their art to that of a technician in a development lab, using another technique for copying photographs by hand.

Photographers are often categorized based on the subjects they photograph. Some photographers explore subjects typical of paintings such as landscape, still life, and portraiture. Other photographers specialize in subjects unique to photography, including street photography, documentary photography, fashion photography,wedding photography and commercial photography. The distinction between artistic photography and photojournalism or other types of photography and the associated techniques does not remove this personal aspect from the work of the great photographers.