The Creative Sort

Many people define something as being artistic if it's been done simply for the sake of creating something appealing. To them, a news reporter on assignment to photograph local kayakers might create interesting images, but they wouldn't necessarily be artistic because the photographs are being used to illustrate a story.

Some people take artistic to mean beautiful, looking for some inherently attractive condition that lifts a picture from being a photograph and transforms it into a work of art. A photo of kayakers floating on a bay at sunset might be artistic if it makes someone appreciate the beauty of nature and the grace of the kayakers (Figure 11.1).