Photographing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The process of taking images with a camera involves artistic choices in composition and the technical adjustments necessary to achieve the desired lighting and focus
2. The act of capturing still images involves making creative decisions regarding visual arrangement while understanding the technical functionalities of a camera system
3. The activity of using a camera to record visual information involves artistic judgment in framing and the precision of settings for light and clarity

Etymology: Photographing is simply the present participle and gerund of "photograph", so its history is that of the verb itself. The verb is built from two Greek elements that were never meant to be combined in a camera. "Phōs" (genitive "phōtos") meant "light", and "graphein" meant "to write" or "to draw", so the original sense was closer to "drawing with light" than to anything mechanical. The compound took shape in English in the 1800s, when the photographic process was new. Its ancestor word "photo-" first appeared as a combining form, and "-graph" supplied the sense of a written or drawn record, so the joined form described a picture made by light. The -ing ending turns the verb into the activity itself, which is why the word now names both the act of taking pictures and the composing and adjusting that the definition describes.

Synonyms: capturing, shooting