In response to a question on the Digital Photography School website, I was giving some thought this morning to what types of photographers there are. Off the top of my head, how about “Memories”, “Journalism”, “Commerce”, “Science” and “Art”?

• If you aim for memories, you use your camera to capture people, places and things that you or others want to remember, whether crude snapshots or much more carefully constructed images.
• If you aim for journalism, you are capturing a story that you hope will have wide interest.
• If you aim for commerce, you are taking images that you hope others might want to buy. You could perhaps also include those taking images that could be commercial but who have no interest in selling them.
• If you aim for science, you are using the camera to explore the way things are, for example freezing action or exploring at macro ranges.
• If you aim for art, you are trying to capture the essence of things and perhaps even moving into symbolism (where the things you photograph convey the essence of other things).

As someone who just pursues photography for the love of it, I think I probably fall into several of those camps, even (non-commercial!) commerce.

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