I am a photographer but I am not a philosopher.
I am a student of photography. I have read several technical books about photography, I have taken classes in different types of photography, and I have studied some of the histories of photography.
I even have a few photographers whose work I am fascinated by, such as Daido Moriyama and Eugène Atget.
But none of this is what makes me a photographer.
What makes me a photographer is consistently getting out once a week with my Nikon (early in the morning or late at night) and intentionally taking photographs, discarding the bad and keeping the good, editing them and judging them yet again, then finally publishing them.
And what does this get me? Well, it isn’t a source of revenue. I didn’t claim to be an exceptional photographer! (See above for a sample).
But it has given me is a pretty good nuanced ability to appreciate nearly every photograph I see, because, to some extent, I have been there. I know what it takes to get a certain angle for a shot, or the considerations in making a decision on how much of an image to crop, or trading off exposure with depth-of-field.
So how does this inform my philosophy journey?
Well, as much as I would like to claim I am a philosopher—I have read hundreds of books about philosophy, I have taken college-level courses on philosophy, and I certainly have my personal list of great philosophers—I don’t write out my philosophical ideas, edit and re-edit them, and put them out there for the world to see.
Therefore, I am just a student of philosophy (not necessarily a bad thing), but not a philosopher.
Yet.