PHOTOGRAPHY IS A SPORT
"COMPETITIVE GREATNESS - Be at your best when your best is needed. Enjoyment of a difficult challenge." John Wooden.
Nick Page is a landscape photographer who I admire no end. Not only is his photography gorgeous, he runs one of the finest YouTube channels I’ve experienced. He is just a down home, easy going, man’s man, a charismatic guy. Everyone wants to be his best friend. But I take exception to a program he produced a few years back titled “Photography is NOT a sport”. It’s easy to understand his position. He is a BIG guy. He’s the kind of guy you would expect to see on the sidelines on the gridiron as either a coach or photographer. But Nick, photography is not football, but it is a sport
A bunch of standard dictionaries use certain words repeatedly to define “sport”. Most notably, the“entertainment” and “competition” aspects are emphasized. The dictionaries leave out the words “fitness” and “likely injuries”, but it’s difficult to think of an entertaining competition where injuries don’t happen. With dictionaries already thicker than off-color jokes at a British pub, I understand why they left off the more detailed descriptors. You won’t get me to leave them off.
These activities are called “sports”: bocce, badminton, bowling, electronic gaming, snooker, swimming and trampoline. A version of Hide-and-Seek has even been proposed for the Olympics. Now you can do all of these for entertainment, they can all be done just for recreation or in competition, yet not all of them have a fitness requirement which means they are somewhat less of a sport in my book. And you can get injured doing all of them. Before you challenge this, think of a bocce player twisting an ankle on a curb, snooker player taking it in the mouth with a cue stick and an egamer with carpel tunnel syndrome (and brain injury?).
To be fair we have to include non-standard dictionary definitions. The Urban Dictionary (don’t go there often!) says a sport is “the sociological phenomena where throwing large amounts of money at anything will cause participants and spectators alike to obsess over the subject in question.” So our complete definition says a sport has these characteristics:
- Entertainment
- Competition
- Fitness
- Risk of Injury
- Throw lots of money at it
- Obsession
Let’s take these one at a time as they apply to photography.
Entertainment – Whether it is the instructor getting a secret kick out of watching a newbie struggle (knowing that he or she was there at one point), a group of photographers having a ball kidding each other throughout a shoot (always happens), or a slip into an icy pond, photography can certainly entertaining. If it hasn’t been for you, it will be for those watching you.
Competition – If I could only tell you how many photography competitions there are these days! Each wants a Jackson just to submit an image. The competitions are even competing with each other for your images and your dollars. Photographers also compete with themselves in an effort to improve each year. Photographers are likely to peek at each other’s Instagram likes to compare their own progress on social media. And Youtubers… they are the greatest competitors of all. Right there in front are the number of views…even the successful seriously kid their competing friends about it! Yes, photography is a competition.
Fitness – You might question this, but let me just say backpacks of photo gear can weigh pounds or more. Hiking eight miles to get the shot can be quite exhausting. A female photoboomer does not ascend the tallest sand dune in North America with heavy equipment unless she is in shape (see Barbara in photo above). Then there are those wedding photographers. They need more deodorant than a skunk and javelina fight to endure four hours of pressure-packed bridal and family photography, all with a half-dozen sister-in-laws shooting from the backside (to be accurate, from the backside of the photographer, not their own backsides). And those wildlife photographers I mentioned last month, they need to be able to hide, or seek, or run. Balance has to be included as a part of fitness. The positions we photographers get ourselves into can require considerable balance lest we end up injured or dead…to the next characteristic.
Risk of Injury- I’ve got this one covered for sure. There was the time I hiked up a lush hillside to capture the spring bloom. Shorts were not a good idea that day. Thankfully, nature didn't call the way it usually does! Some of us are severely allergic to urushiol, found in poison oak. My leg is shown. Then there was the time I stepped on a bent root while photographing fall color. It snapped. My leg again! Or when Barbara slipped on a wet log (she got a great waterfall picture, though) and broke a rib. Circling back to the “competition”, it is exactly that characteristic that encourages photographers to take extreme risks to capture epic photos (better than the other guy’s) that will be featured on some photography superhero magazine cover. We do dream and we are capable of very stupid stuff, but this is what makes life exciting. There is a reason why they call a thriller movie a cliffhanger.
Injuries are a fact for photographers. Don't test your response to poison oak if you want to enjoy the following few weeks.
Throwing money at it – Do we even need to discuss this one? It’s a fact that most photographers have GAS…Gear Acquisition Syndrome. A very good photography setup is easily ten grand. Go Leica or Hasselblad with some extra lenses and it can reach $30K. Barbara used to say I chose the three most expensive hobbies. I’ve pretty much given up my other two sports, skiing and golf. Both were mostly recreational sports, but sometimes there was competition…just like photography!
Obsession – If it’s not looking forward to the next trip, it’s studying Google Earth online, looking at other photographers’ work and post processing images. Some are so obsessed they do Youtube videos, post to Instagram daily or write photography newsletters. For you younger dudes and dudettes, you had better be be obsessed or you won’t pay the bills.Once you get into it, this wonderful hobby/sport/profession is an obsession. As long as we recognize there are is a Creator much bigger than ourselves and relationships with others to nourish, photography is an obsession that can enhance the better half of life.
Have I made my case? Let me hear from you even if you disagree.