shutterhack

Ladang graveyard, originally uploaded by Fadzly Mubin.
Taken with a Nikon D50 and AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6G lens

The means by which photographs are made are central to the identity of photography itself.

The term "photography" is not a reference to a given picture or a picture making impulse. It is the invented name for a particular process. Sir John Herschel coined "Photography" out of thin air in front of the Royal Society at Somerset House, London, on the 14th of March, 1839. The key phrase is recorded in the minutes and it goes "Photography or the application of the chemical rays of light to the purpose of pictorial representation...".

That is where the matter lay for the next 160 or so years. All the works of Talbot, Weston, Adams, Cartier-Bresson, and millions of other sat neatly, certainly, and unambiguously within that definition.

Now, of course, highly detailed pictures can be generated by painting machines (inkjet) controlled by electronic files which may be, in whole or in part, derived from the digitisation of a lens image. Vulgar usage appends the term "photography " to this too even though it is a very different thing, technically and philosophically, from original photography.

Now when we say "photography" we need to specify the means, otherwise it is not certain what sort of picture we are talking about.