There is a certain pleasure on execute things that is distinguished [here] in two categories. The first is the pleasure of archiving the end goal and the second as the pleasure in the activity itself. Both, or any activity we start or engage in is caused by a mental inquietude. Every mental inquietude, according to Antonio Damasio, is caused by somatic experiences; the reaction when we experience irritation, pleasure and everything in between. Reaction as striving for life balance. We react (emote), then create a mental picture (icon) of the experience which we associate to a meaning, from which we create feelings. Feeling, then, connect us back to mental picture, activating our memories (of experiences). We like to believe we are rational beings when in fact we are emotional beings. We learn, remember, think and execute things based on our mental pictures brought by emotion associate to them, even when we believe we are being pure rational, like in science.

We don't perceive the world and reality as it is but as we are. As the mental picture we have from our experiences are, and meanings associated to them. Our five senses are not meant to reveal us the world out there but to help us keep our life balance regulation (preserve and perpetuate life), in finding food when we are hunger, in find shade when we are tired, in identify danger to avoid and pleasure to chase. The evolution presented us with our mental capacity in order to quick, or better adapt in the short term, to our environment changes, increasing our chances of survival and life perpetuation. Nonetheless, we use our highly developed nervous system to attempt the understanding of reality. We can't experience all, or many, mental pictures at once but one by one and consequently the feelings associated to each of them - although we can experience them so quickly that we don't realize it. - It means that we experience our mental pictures in a linear way, which allow us to experience what we call as train of thoughts. As we are the tool we use to give meaning to reality, we fall in what Kant used to call as The professional thinker fallacy. We perceive time, reality, history and even science in a leaner and progressive way because it's how our mind - and our verbal communication - works; not because reality, time, history and science is linear and progressive. It doesn't mean science does not progress. It means that progress is subjective to our mind.

The will is a mental activity inquietude. Will is not merely the power or choosing or making decision - it's not a mere desire, strive or wanting. - It is rather a conflict between two drives: yes and no, as Hannah Arendt describes in her book The Life of The Mind. The will, before become a concept or mental organ known by philosophers, was interpreted as a duality in one person, as a hidden person inside a person. It's as to have two "I"s, the "I" who commands and the "I" who obey, which the second one perceive both "I"s as a whole willing desire obedience anticipation. The first one is the will. The will is the commanding thought, as described by Heidegger. We Will as overcoming this mental duality conflict.

Every mental activity ceases the sense experience and our senses experience cease our thinking, meaning that when we are thinking (our attention in our mental pictures - train thoughts) we are unaware of our senses perception. If something happens to grab our sense perception attention, we then become unaware of our thinking. In order to fulfill the will we act through our senses (act in the world) which once completed ceases the Will and put us at a mental fulfilling rest (no mental conflict/inquietude but just being), because we cease to want things once we get them.

The first kind of pleasure from execution that I mentioned at the beginning, that means reach to it's end, comes from the wish against the activity itself, which we do in order to overcome it, as an obstacle to or real goal. It's like the Aristotelian thought that says the goal of work is leisure, as the goal of war is peace. Once you execute the activity and reach it's goal you feel fulfilled and at rest, without mental conflict/inquietude (at least for a while).

The second kind of pleasure we have from executing things, is not in the activity end but in the activity experience itself. Duns Scotus, one of the most original and important philosophers from middle-ages, called it as love. The transformation of the Will in love. It's the activity that doesn't need to reach it's end in order to bring a restful mind. At the same time, because it never reaches it's end it never ceases the will. So the activity causes temporary pause in the Will expectation for an end, and such temporary pause, during the activity, causes us a constant fulfillment, the pleasure in the activity and not on it's end. Or in other words, the goal of the activity is not to get something once it's end (like leisure we expect get from the end of the work or peace we are after when we do war), but the goal is the activity itself.

Coming from a religious philosopher it explains that the divine love, or true love, is the fulfillment one have for a desired object not through possession (which would ends the desire) but through pure activities interaction/creation around, or related, to such desired object.

While for Nietzsche the will is a destructive power. The goal of the will is to become it's master, but once events happened the will have no power. You have no power in shape the past, or as in Nietzsche words: The Will cannot will backwards. For him, as well for Heidegger, it's the source of our duality (the will) conflict. What is left for the will frustration of not being the master of past events is to destroy it, by willing new events to pass in which the Will can be the master.

Ancient Greek philosophers didn't know the will, but they had a parable about the best athlete being the one who is not looking for glory or fame (the goal to archive at the end of the sport activity), but the one who finds the pleasure in the sport itself. Something similar we think today about artists, photographers or creators in general. The true or the best creator being the one not doing it for money or fame, but for the art sake. The activity not as a gateway to happiness but the happiness itself. Or as the Greek philosophers described, one as both actor in the stage of life and spectator of their own act. The individual duality working together and overcoming it's internal duality conflict (inquietude).

The Oriental thinkers (Daoism) had a similar allegory about life being a stage, where we act, but through our act we forget who we originally are, causing a conflict between our acting character and who we are inside. The conflict is solved when we realize our acting character and, from such realization, we become our own spectator of our own acting in life, enjoying the stage of life both as actor and spectator - enjoying the activity by finding fulfillment in it, doing it for it's on sake.

In a modernist philosophy this duality is interpreted as the social self and original self (this second called Being). The social self hides the internal Being. The Will is the spontaneous and intuitive pulse of our internal self (our Being) emerging during activities focused on the pleasure of the activity sake, as if enjoying our internal self emerging.

What the Ancient Greek Philosophers and Daoism have in common is the perception of life not as linear but as a cycle. In the west, the linear view of life and reality gained space specially because the way we associate our mental picture and meanings to our linear verbal writing system. The concept of a willing-Ego is only possible through such linear view of reality. During Middle-Ages and Renascence, both linear and cyclical philosophical perception of reality developed parallel to each other; as Hannah Arendt describes, Descartes and Leibniz in one side, Hobbes and Spinoza in the other side. Kant somewhere else. Our scientific path during modernism was influenced by the linear perspective which brought the concept of the Will. Such influence was mainly because of a linear religious doctrine imposed by the Catholic Church as political institution in Europe. As Antonio Damasio narrate in his book Looking For Spinoza, he [Spinoza] influenced our great thinkers and discoveries but in a hidden way, behind the linear perception that creates the contradiction betwen free will and causative effects of a linear event of life. The Inquisition banned any kind of Spinozist philosophy to be learned, used or mentioned for more than one hundred years, consequently (and accidentally) giving more highlight to Descartes philosophy. 

Cupid is the Roman god of love. He is the counterpart of the Greek god called Eros, the god of erotic love, the painful desire of what is not possessed, of what is somewhere else, inciting the imagination about the absent desired other.

Her eyes gazing the void while she is deep immersed in thoughts. Her hands as trying to reach and hold the pain inside. As Siri Hustvedt points out, the somatic experience induced by thoughts are no less real than a direct somatic experiences out in the world. Or as Hannah Arendt said, every emotion is a somatic experience. The source of our imagination and thinking are our feelings. Our feelings are the interpretation and meanings given to what our body senses experience. According to Antonio Damasio, the mind is a product of our body, not a distinct apart from it.

The image has a kind of movement, she is not still but moving, either in a bodily sense reacting to her feelings or in a mental sense of the dizziness, caused the mental travel.

Such movement in the image is not only suggested by her body expression and composition but also by the backdrop in a leaning position. The rugged backdrop is a curtain which suggest the scene is in a private setting. We look not as spectators of the scene but as a voyeur of what was supposed to be behind curtains. On the other hand, it also symbolizes a stage background of a performed act, like in a theater, like a fancy sculpture. 

The comedian Jim Carrey said in an interview that with his comedy he has realized what all people want is to be free from concern. Despite the fact people usually don't take him seriously I don't think he said it casually. We tend to believe through thinking we will find understanding to things, solution to problems and knowledge but - the most likely - often we think to withdraw us from reality, without realizing it, so thinking becomes an addiction specially when we are going through stress.

We don't experience what is going on in our mind with our senses. It is as whatever we think about ceases to exist once it's projected in our mind. We experience our thinking through meaning, ceasing to be a somatic one. Or as Alan Watts used to say, those who think too much has nothing to think about other than their own thoughts. Hannah Arendt explained it in her book The Life of The Mind: "All thoughts arise out of experiences, but no experience yields any meaning or even coherence without undergoing the operation of imagining and thinking. Seen from the perspective of thinking, life in its sheer thereness is meaningless; seen from the perspective of immediacy of life and the world given to the senses, thinking is, as Plato indicated, a living death".

Plato's associating thinking to a living death wasn't his negative point of view though. While we are thinking we are unaware of our own corporeality, which Plato understood as achieving our pure soul quality. Plato philosophical tradition was perpetuated through Europe during Middle Ages and Renaissance by the Catholic church, influencing philosophers as Descartes who concluded "the soul can think without the body". This reflects the believe of a duality. The distinction between body and mind (soul).

Against the occidental philosophical tradition is the believe that we think because we have a body; the mind being a product of our body and not distinct from it. Again, thoughts arise out of experiences - from our body senses. As our experiences turn into thoughts the bodily experienced thing disappears. As Arendt puts it, "in order to appear in my mind only, it must first be de-sensed, and the capacity to transform sensed-objects into images is called imagination". The imagination deals only with what is absent to our senses. The mind deals with nothing other than itself. Perhaps we could say that the opposite of thinking is body experience - perceive with our senses.

On the other hand, as the Greek philosophers believed, only the spectator and never the actor can see and understand the spectacle of life, because the spectator is free from concerns. The spectator is not acting in the spectacle but only contemplating it. Different from the old occidental philosophical believe, something suggest this contemplation is not done through thoughts and imagination but only through somatic experiences.

I personally believe the best meaning we can give to life is leisure. As Aristotle understood it, not the free time we got after a day of work, not a play and not a recreation but the deliberate act of abstaining, of hold oneself back from the ordinary activity determined by our daily wants in order to contemplate it. This contemplation is the act of leisure, "which in turns was the true goal of all others activities, just as peace, for Aristotle, was true goal of war" - quoting Arendt again.

While for the Greeks "as spectator you may understand the 'truth' of what the spectacle is about; but with the price of have to pay a withdraw from participating in it", the oriental wisdom presented by Alan Watts suggest something different; that we can be both the actor and the spectator. As the Taoist story goes, imagine if you were god and knew all without surprises; how boring would it be!? So we play this theater of life for fun - just as children do their play sometimes taking it too serious and forgetting it's just a play - and as we grow older we forget who we are, we forget we are wearing a phony by taking it too serious and thinking it's what we are. The spectator is the one who can see the play and enjoy the spectacle while still playing it, only knowing now that it's all a play and people forgot about it. - Like actors playing a scene for a movie sometimes taking it too serious mistaking the playing character as themselves.

As I understand it - or from my point of view which is questionable - contemplation is the way we can experience what is around us with our body senses, until the moment we gain the awareness about the spectacle we are in, without our thinking distraction that alienates us from our somatic experiences. This is why I think art is important for. The thing that makes us stop and listen, see, feel through our senses. Pay attention on our somatic experience and step aside from the vicious meaning thinking.

Truth and meaning are not the same thing. Our thinking doesn't bring us the reality truth but meaning, because our verbal language, associated to words, is metaphorical and not analog to the mental images created from our somatic experiences. "Most people have experienced the odd sensation of estrangement that comes from looking long enough at a single object", says Siri Hustvedt in her book  Mysteries Of The Rectangle. She goes on: "for all of us there was a time before we knew what things were called, and then the world looked different. Cézanne's still life are a rigorous effort to return to a vision unburdened by meaning". In other words, Cézanne attempt was to see in painting what was lost in language.

When we look, listen, feel hard enough, long enough we contemplate and find a world beyond meaning which tell us something else and which our verbal language is too limiting to comprise.

I remember 15 years ago when I use to see people everywhere talking about the democratization of information and learning thanks to the internet, along with the democratization of expression where anyone can share their knowledge and opinions. The free information accessible  to all. It's ironic seeing fake-news and conspiracy theory popularized nowadays.

When I was about 14 years old, in 1997, bullying and other sort of offenses was considered kind of normal, at least in my neighborhood. Often such kind of provocation wasn't taken seriously despite of verbal aggressiveness. This kind of communication was somehow the standard nevertheless, meaning people verbally attacking and defending themselves with further attacks. It was in Sao Paulo (Brazil) which I believe to have an aggressive communication culture probably because of socio-economic gaps, along or as consequence of social segregation and prejudices. Prejudices often disguised as jokes.

In a weekend when I was returning home, I met one of my friends arguing with a bunch of other guys a couple of years old than us. They were calling him stupid and laughing at him because he said Alberto Santos-Dummont was the inventor of wrist watch. This was an information that I also believed to be true but back then I would never waist time and get angry trying to convince others about what I believed to be true. Maybe because life seemed to be already too stressful back then that I would rather avoid any more of it. So I called my friend inviting him to hang out somewhere else, and somehow helping him to distance from the situation he was in. Still stupefied while we were walking away, he was explaining me the other guys didn't want to believe on him. I replied to him suggesting to let it go. At that time I had not conceptualized it but I felt that there are many people who are not curious and interested to know things but only in self-affirmation. I feel I am right so you must be wrong (It has something to do with identity that I will expatiate in an other blog post eventually). Without any real argument to explain they are right they rely on verbal violence by offending and making the opponent angry, in order to feel as the winner of the argument. Honestly, this kind of conversation and its violence is what I see being popularized the most in the internet.

Recently I have been wondering if we really can teach others. My thinking is that probably people only learn things if they want to learn (curiosity or duty) or if the situation is conducive to learning. If such thinking is somehow true the goal of teaching is not only providing information but also help to create the situation that is propitious for learning. And this may be the reason why the internet is dominated by fake-news and conspiracy theory believers. A place where everyone can spread ideas of any kind in a moment of economic and, consequently, social distress.

When I began with street photography I was apprehensive about people reaction. What would they think? What if they get angry? I then thought that if there are others doing it I can do it as well. It was in Ireland where I had the mostly friendly strangers experience ever but my first attempt of stop someone and ask if I could take a portrait of them was considered a shameful failure by me at the time. What my subject said that made me feel ashamed was a single simple word: "No". So I went home frustrated for not obtaining what I was expecting. I watched some videos about street photography and one hour later I was in the street trying again. This time I told myself to not expect anything. If people says "no" it's ok and there is nothing wrong about it. Actually, we are supposed to take risks in order to learn and grow, in order to see what is possible and what is not, and in order to loose ties to expectations that narrow our perception about things. With this twist of mind I endured a couple of other "no"s  before hear a "Sure". From that moment on I felt there was nothing to worry about.

With experience I learned to improve my communication. Being more direct and specific, ask as a suggestion or as an offer and not as a expectation or demand. One of the main reason of violent communication is the thinking that what others are asking is an order instead of a request. People hate to do things when they are demanded to and the natural reaction is to reject. On the other hand we all like to feel useful and helpful. Antonio Damasio tell in his book Looking for Spinoza that our brain produce Serotonin, which gives us a well-being feeling, when we help or cooperate with others as a team. It's part of our empathy which make us place ourselves in others shoes, sensing others emotion and feelings as our own.

Marshall Rosenberg, who wrote No Violent Communication, tells a story about an interview with a Nazi war criminal, who was asked "Was it hard to send ten of thousand of people to death?", which he answered "No, it was easy. Easy because our language makes it easy".  He then explained that his fellow officers had a name for this language: Amtsprechen, the bureaucratic language. A language that denies option, consequently it denies responsibility. It is interesting to know that there are many people who can not distinguish between rule or law and morality, which is the same as  distinguish can and can't from should and shouldn't. When we try to obtain some kind of alternative collaboration for a solution which would help make all the parties happier or less stressed such kind of people are not able to do it, they start quote what they believe to know about the law and their rights, meaning "I can do it so I will not do what you what me to do". Basicly they view others request as demand and in return react in a defensive way. They don't understand the saying "Just because you can do it, it doesn't mean you should do it (in consideration of others)".

In Ireland, after I got used to it, most people I approached was happy to let me photographing them, which they saw as a request which they could help with. In Germany most of my attempts with street portrait result is rejection, some people even get angry with my approach and can become verbally violent. I see it as a social phobia, worry that I want do something bad with the photo such as judge them or use the image for commercial purpose. worry about what might happens with a photo someone took of them, where can it end and who can see it. Worry about my approach has a second intention such as sell things, demand money or sexual intention when I am approaching women. In short, a lot of expectations which place people in the fear zone.

I think the coolest Germans are in Hamburg, although I have not been in most German's region yet. It was in Hamburg that I met Lucie Nechanická. We used to meet and wander in the streets to photograph it together. When she saw me approaching strangers asking if I could take their portrait she looked apprehensive, saying that she would not feel comfortable doing it, which reminded me when I was attempting it for the first time in Dublin.
Even still doing it in Germany I didn't feel as confident and easy as in Ireland, so I approach people with less frequency. But have Lucie on my side was different because she is a woman transmitting other women a sense of safeness with my approach. They actually became more friendly thanks to her. It was most evident when I was waiting Lucie in a train station and around me there were other people waiting to meet their friends. I saw a woman with a cool outfit,  nice hair and interesting tatoo on her leg so I came to her asking if I could take her portrait. She looked at me with doubt and unsure but suddenly Lucie arrived saying "you don't waist time" to me. After my subject saw Lucie and realized we knew each other, she readily accepted to be photographed.

Street portrait in Hamburg is much easier than in other places I have been in Germany, but people still have some kind of fear about other people reaction. It's a different world than in Ireland where I could talk and photograph most people specially women without any tension, and I think it reflects in the way people communicate, in their expectations and consequently in how they learn and perceive other kinds of experiences.

Unlike when I was a boy, I have recently engaged in useless argument with people who didn't want to believe on what I was saying (in the internet), consequently I was annoyed and offended with others provocation, calling me stupid and names. Later on I was wondering why I was behaving like this. What changed? Did I forget my youth knowledge? And the only thing I could think about was my reality change, which created different expectation and frustration, therefore changing my experiences and learning. I am now in a process of no violence redeem.

The photography field attracts many technology and machines enthusiasts who come with the technicist attention to it. I see it as one of the reason for the commercial photography to be seen and used as standard or reference for quality among many people interested in photography (although the debate on preferences between perfectionism and rusticity exist since Ancient Greece and probably even before). The other reason is the fact that commercial photography dominate our visual experience wherever we are through publicity. Commercial photographers are mostly technicians who create images based on someone else ideas. Most of it is technical reproduction and solutions, even the advertise photography in fashion magazines that mimic conceptual fashion photography. Depending how alienated the photographer is in this approach to photography he may comes to the conclusion that what goes beyond such technical and commercial standard is poor executed or wrong.

Fortunately photography is not a black and white thing limited to right and wrong. The meaning of anything is in the context. When we talk about quality we have to think about the context and meaning the work has. The commercial photography has its context and language, its main purpose is the tangibility, make the product or service presented in the image as tangible to the viewers, as if the spectator can touch and possess the object in the photo with their eyes. The visual sense appeal. It could not be different when the goal of the image is to sell a sensual joy to people's eyes and stimulate possession desires. As John Berger says in Ways of Seeing, The publicity image offers an alternative for the public, a better version of themselves, that they can obtain for the price of the product. 

Photography that has other purposes will, or should, use other language. The language that fit its message and context and which can be many. None of them are better or worst than the other nor more or less correct. Each of them are only good and bad based on their own context, public and message.

Siri Hustvedt in her essay "Playing, wild thoughts, and novels underground" refer to writing in this quote but it actually applies to any kind of artistic work: "There are no rules for writing novels. Those who believe there are rules are pedants and poseurs and do not deserve a minute of our time. Modes of writing and various schools come and go: Grub Street, Naturalism, the nouveau roman, nagical realism. The novel remains."

When I photograph I often stay away from the sensual appeal which Cicero in ancient Rome used to call as the sense corruption, because it works on provoking anxieties. Instead I like to express my feelings and experiences. Technicality is about have control, the technical control of a machine precision appreciated from automated tools, catching our attention for the tool settings and control for the precise control result. In order to better express my feelings and experience I rather let this technical control aside, I take the advantage of the manual control which comes with my spontaneous human touch and failure. Or even when using automated tools, trust the automated failure as my own human failure with the machine, assuming therefore my sincere experience and adding it to the narrative context where it belongs.

Brené Brown, who wrote The Gifts of Imperfection, explains that it's important to understand the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism. “Healthy striving is self-focused: "How can I improve?" Perfectionism is other-focused: "What will they think?”. And I think it's important to remember that we should improve in relation to ourselves on or own language, context and message. Not in relation to a pre-determined standard or have somebody else as reference of improvement goal/quality. This is not the same as be inspired by other creators and their works, because we all get inspiration from other creators, even unintended, in any way. 

At the end, I don't want the viewers of my photos seeing themselves transported in the image by provoking anxieties. I want them to take the image as a memory or dream that inspire their feelings and contemplative own creative imagination. Or at least tell us what or who we are, or who I am.

We need rules as reference or start point when we are introduced to new activities, when we have no much from ourselves to put in a new work but practice, get inspired through copy, to fit in looking for results with a pre-determined expectation. We can get great pleasure on reproduction, from the empathic recognition of other creators and social feeling, or only for the pleasure of tools manipulation and the transformation observation. By doing so we can develop our own feeling, voice and personal way to create when we have a voice to express.

I was watching a documentary a while back, about french soldiers returning home after the second great war, the war which France was the country that had more dead and injured soldiers, maybe because it was the country that sent more men to the war. When survivor and fit-to-work soldiers returned home after the war, looking forwards their families and labour routine that was occupied by women during the war, they found themselves lost, as lack of identity and purpose. As soldiers those men got used to follow orders, giving themselves to the battalion rhythm for its greater performance, the fellowship was their identity. Later on in society, working in their family farms, shops and industry they found themselves on their own with their individual decisions for their personal life and activities, and specially their own rhythm. What was missing was their inner voice.

I can't help on seeing some similarities in the corporation team work culture specially in the 80's and 90's, when they wanted workers to see the business which they worked for as part of their family, where one find their purpose and identity through the job and culture provided by the business and their people.

Behind it all there is the fixation, the focus which people becomes alienated. As Frédéric Lordon describes, alienation is not loss but fixation. The more limited is your attention and experiences range (fixed) the more alienated you find yourself. Through alienation it is easier to drive a person or a group attention, work and goals to a determined direction, the direction aimed by their leader or ruler which the followers take as their own. 

The Teutonic (Germanic) tribes has such principal as tradition. The military and hierarchical rules in society culture by the Prussians for example, expecting people to give up their own personal goals and interests in order to follow their social hierarchy determinism, looking forwards the to the greater completion of their "nation" (society) as their individual aim, instead of looking towards climb the social hierarchy. Like this workers can focus on only improve their ability on their own work and behavior expected from their social hierarchy (like in the army), instead of the distraction of dreams, looking and expecting eventually to get somewhere else. It's alienation where people get attached to rules for their guidance, and which one deep alienated they get lost, disorientated, messy, when there is no leader and their rules to follow as their own goals and identity.

The opposite is the ability to listen to our own inner voice, our timing, have a wide scope to observe and react in accord and spontaneously to each situation by following our guts, when rules are not what give us direction anymore but what make us feel limited, limiting our experiences, our observations, or experimentation, our self learning and expression. When desalination becomes necessary because rules funnel us to the alien aim that we take as our own.

Listening to our own inner voice is not the same a individualism and selfishness because when we are listen our inner voice we are listen others around us as well, sensing the world around us and trusting our our feelings. Then our expression take others in consideration.

Rules are for reproduction, and for creators who can not feel or trust their inner voice [yet]. ​A true creative work is a work that has its own voice and rhythm. A sincere self expression and feeling.

What makes some people suspicious about the "art status" of photography is the fact that the photo creation is highly dependable from a "photo machine". I have read a couple of years ago a study by an academic artist saying that photography is not art. His argument was about the technology limitation which the photographer is dependable to create his works. ​

​For decades many photographers have tried to bring photography to the art discussion and galleries to make it more recognized as art. Until now a days with many people buying photographs and many photographers calling themselves as artists, there are still those who doesn't consider photography a true art. Or at least as artistic as painting or sculpture. 

Recently I saw this question again when somebody wrote in an art community: 
"When artist depends on machines (not tools) to create; the machines' capabilities are the controlling factors of the joint creations that comes from the union of artist with machine. 
An Artist's tools on the other hand can be created by the hand of the artist and is not dependent on the bureaucracy of technology." 

It is hard to don't agree with what the quote says. It is right. 
But when thinking of cameras, are every camera machines? Certainly digital cameras are pure machines, or a body filled with electronic in it. But a true camera obscure is just an empty box, that can be made with any material, with a hole where the light comes in. Which means that it is not a machine at all but just a tool for the photographer as the brush is a tool for the painter. 

Photographers can make their on negative (and positive images) preparing his own plate or paper sensible to light as painters can make their own canvas or any other material they which to paint on. 

Cameras, negatives and even light have their limitation as canvas and ink have their limitation as well. What makes people feel more like an artist is the ability to craft with self expression and a vision for their creation in mind. The reason many photographers still use pinhole cameras or film negatives is because they can craft it with their own hands instead of just operate machines that are digital cameras and computers. 

Yet, even when highly dependable of the machine work and capability, digital photographers and digital artists still can express their creativity and vision through their works. Which I think is what matter after all. Not much different from a director who is dependent from actors works and abilities, or from contemporary artists who have never touched their creation but paid somebody to build the work setting for them. 

It is funny to think of it because before Renascence artists weren't considered artists as they are today. They were just crafter-men. Hand workers as any other.