Thoughts on art.

A camera is just a tool that can be used to create Art (with a capital A) just as a pencil, piece of charcoal etc. can be used for the same purpose. The amount of time it takes to gain facility with a pencil does not insure that the product is Art. Just as buying a 5000 dollar camera doesn't necessarily give the owner artistic credibility. Almost all, so called, visual art is, in fact, craft and interior decoration that is palatable to an uneducated mass. With a camera, the craft, the technique of making an in-focus image is much easier to acquire then for most other media, but an in-focus closeup of a flower is still just an in-focus closeup of a flower, and has nothing to do with art whether done with colored pencils, oil paint, pastel, a computer program or a digital camera. 

 I took photography with a guy named Harry Callahan and his approach to the photographic image was both arcane and illusive. There are photographic images that are Art (with a capital A) but developing the skill and sensibility to capture those images is just as difficult as developing the hand skills.