World Photography Day – Reportage
On August 19, shortly after 8 a.m., I spoke with reporter Teodora Joksimović on Radio Beograd about photography in honor of World Photography Day.
Below, you can listen to the audio recording of our conversation (only Serbian is available), read the full transcript, and, in the final section of the article, find a few interesting facts about World Photography Day.
Transcript
Today, when practically all of us have a camera in our pockets and take dozens of photographs every day, perhaps more than ever it is worth asking what actually makes a photograph good. On the occasion of World Photography Day, I’m joined by professional photographer Tijana Đinđić, and we’ll talk about how much photography today is a craft, how much it is art, and how much it is simply about capturing the moment. Good morning, Tijana.
Good morning, and thank you for inviting me to take part in this conversation.
Tijana, as we said, today is World Photography Day. So, to begin with, now that we all take photographs with our phones, can anyone create a truly good photograph? And what about traditional photography?
Thank you, that’s a good question. Today, I would say that anyone can take a good photograph with a phone. Especially because, with the rise and accessibility of smartphones, people have become much more engaged with photography and have developed a much better understanding of the aesthetics of composition.
People think much more about what they want to include in the frame and what message they want the photograph to convey. There is much more thought given to what we are actually trying to communicate through an image.
It’s similar to telling a story: you need a beginning, a development and an ending. In the same way, a photograph shouldn’t wander away from its point. People today know better how to compose a frame and how to highlight the essence of what they want to show.
The emergence of smartphones has made people much more conscious of what they want to say when they take a photograph.
The difference between professional photography and the kind of everyday photography we all use is that a professional photographer knows how to consistently deliver a high-quality photograph under whatever conditions they are given at that particular moment.
Whether it’s dark, the weather conditions are difficult, or the lighting is unusual – a professional photographer knows how to work with it. For example, they know how to position people who don’t know how to pose.
So, regardless of the circumstances, they can consistently deliver a good result.
That is the difference between professional photography and the everyday photography we all take. We all have those moments when we look at a photo and say, “Wow, that turned out really well!”
For a professional photographer, a good photograph doesn’t simply “turn out.” They consistently deliver a good result through thoughtful composition, lighting and photography.
What do you notice first when you look at a photograph? The light, the composition, the emotion, or something else?
Throughout the different stages of my development as a photographer and in my photographic practice, I have focused on different things. In the beginning, for example, while studying at the Academy of Applied Arts, I was very much preoccupied with aesthetics – composition, light, whether there was balance, whether the composition worked, and the relationship between colours.
I was really focused on that every day: on creating something visually compelling, much like artists – Renaissance painters, for example. They calculated and prepared sketches of their paintings before ultimately creating their works on a large canvas.
I think that is the artistic approach to every photograph or painting that someone wants to create.
However, with experience, I now focus much more on the poetics of a photograph – in other words, its emotion.
You can have a beautiful balance and beautiful colours, but if a photograph has only aesthetics and lacks atmosphere, if it doesn’t have that X factor that makes you stop and look at it, that makes you wonder what happened emotionally in that moment – for example, when we photograph a person, what was that person feeling at that particular moment – then something is missing.
The point isn’t simply to photograph the subject, but also the background, what surrounds them.
And when all those elements come together and create a particular feeling that makes you think further, then you’ve encountered a good photograph.
So, to simplify it, today I think more about emotion, whereas in the past I thought more about aesthetics.
Tell us, is the popularity of the old way of photographing on the rise again?
I would say it is. That culture is definitely making a comeback.
However, I actually had an exhibition back in 2022 at the Parobrod Cultural Centre, where I presented analogue photographs.
The analogue process is quite toxic, and I am very environmentally conscious, so lately I prefer digital photography. But I absolutely wanted to return to analogue photography because it represents a more honest form of photography – a true document of a particular time, in which you don’t have much freedom to alter or change reality.
So, in a way, it is the original, authentic form of photography. People have a certain emotional connection to it because, in a sense, we all miss that “real” reality, which isn’t always represented realistically on social media.
Since you mentioned social media, have social networks helped photography, or have they simply got us used to overly edited and perfect images?
Social media have helped photography develop in many ways. I believe that, on a mass scale, people have started thinking more about how they photograph things — they calculate, they consider what they are actually going to capture, consciously and intentionally.
I remember our old holiday photographs. The only point was to get the subject in focus, and whatever ended up in the frame — well, that was what you got.
But when we look back at those photographs, they still have what I’m talking about: that poetry of the moment, something, that atmosphere, that inner feeling that the person behind the camera conveys, even though you can’t actually see it in the frame.
So, on the one hand, social media have brought a lot of good because people have started thinking about photography.
On the other hand, what is missing is that poetry, that spontaneity, and, of course, that documentary quality. The alterations and editing have become so extensive that you already know you’re not looking at reality.
And that’s rather strange, because when photography was invented, it was literally seen as a reflection of reality.
And finally, a piece of advice for amateurs. What is the most common mistake amateurs make when taking photographs?
I can only give you my personal advice.
What don’t I like? I don’t like the culture of selfies because, for example, people aren’t aware that the distortions created when you hold the camera too close – particularly facial distortions – mean that we start seeing ourselves in that image on our phone, which isn’t actually realistic.
It happens to me when I photograph people professionally that they are surprised by how they look. They suddenly realise that their forehead or their eyes appear smaller, for example.
The distortions created by the wide-angle lens on a phone can be so unrealistic that people forget what they actually look like.
So that’s just one piece of advice I would give people when it comes to selfie culture: be aware that this isn’t necessarily what you really look like.
And that’s just one example – there are many more.
Tijana, thank you for this interesting conversation.
Hvala i vama.
Professional photographer Tijana Đinđić spoke to us for the First Programme of Radio Belgrade. And perhaps that is the best reminder for World Photography Day: what matters most is not how many photographs we take, but whether some of them truly manage to preserve a moment.
Note:
I would like to add one piece of information that wasn’t mentioned during the interview:
Why is World Photography Day celebrated on August 19?
World Photography Day is celebrated on August 19 as a reminder of one of the most important moments in the history of visual art and technology.
On that date in 1839, the French Academy of Sciences officially presented the world with the daguerreotype, the first commercially successful photographic process, developed by French artist and inventor Louis Daguerre and photography pioneer Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.
The French government subsequently acquired the patent and made the invention available to the public, helping photography become accessible to a much wider audience and setting it on a path of rapid development. The event is considered a turning point that forever changed the way people record and preserve reality.
Although the origins of photography date back to the 19th century, World Photography Day in its modern form began to be celebrated in 2010, following an initiative by Australian photographer Korske Ara, with the aim of bringing together professional photographers, amateurs and photography enthusiasts around the world.
From the first black-and-white images created with long exposures to today’s digital and AI technologies, photography has undergone an extraordinary evolution. Yet, despite all the technological advances, its essence remains the same — to preserve a moment, convey emotion and tell a story that words often cannot.
World Photography Day is therefore not only a celebration of photographers, but also an opportunity to recognise a medium that, for more than 180 years, has shaped the way we remember people, events and the world around us.
