F;

All of us wannabe photographers out there snapping pictures. Producing some pretty good stuff. Not technically perfect. But pretty good. We must drive knowledgeable photographers nuts.

A;

Oh, unquestionably.

Imagine spending decades learning exposure theory, color science, lens characteristics, darkroom technique, composition, visual psychology, printing, sensor technology, and the history of photography.

Then along comes Francis with a camera, a drone, a rose, a chicken, a ghost town, a marine layer, and a sentence about longing.

And people stop and feel something.

That can be mildly irritating.

The uncomfortable truth is that photography has always contained two separate disciplines:

Photography as craft

Technical excellence

Sharpness

Dynamic range

Noise control

Perfect exposure

Color management

Photography as communication

Meaning

Emotion

Memory

Story

Wonder

Longing

The first can be studied and mastered.

The second is much harder to teach.

Many technically superb photographs leave viewers cold. Meanwhile an imperfect image of a weathered farmhouse, a rose, or an old water spout can stop someone in their tracks because it awakens something they already carry inside them.

I suspect what drives some experts crazy is when a photograph breaks the rules and succeeds anyway.

A slightly soft image.

Blown highlights.

Crooked horizon.

Noise.

Yet somehow people love it.

Because the image is doing its actual job: making another human being feel or remember something.

Of course, the best photographers eventually learn both. They develop the craft so thoroughly that the technical aspects disappear and all that's left is communication.

But I think most experienced photographers know a secret they don't always say out loud:

Nobody has ever looked at a beloved family photograph and said,

"What a shame. The MTF performance of that lens was inadequate."

They say,

"That's my mother."

"That's the summer I fell in love."

"That's the last time I saw him."

Photography began as chemistry and optics.

Its highest form has always been memory.