I HAVE AN iPhone 15 Plus Max. It is equipped with the best phone camera in the world and I use it quite often to capture events and people I meet on a daily basis. Visitors to my office seldom get away without posing with me in front of the “Penang Institute” logo.

But I don’t consider these many photos artistic in any way. They can be good and not good, but they are not art, and they were not meant to be art. This is mainly because I do not take these pictures in that spirit. I am just snapping to commemorate and to archive. I am not creating art.

If I were to take artsy pictures, I will probably first need a proper camera, not the multi-functional tool that the iPhone is. Holding a camera in my hand, with options of changing aperture, depth of field and colour tones, would put me in the right mood—into my creative mode. What I then shoot has more potential to be art, or even good art.

Equally essential is inspiration. I will need to feel that I am creating, or seeing something as if for the first time and wishing to freeze it to bring to others to appreciate, or framing a shot for artistic effect and not for documentation. An iPhone camera documents for the most part. The smart phone is too much a part of my daily life, and it is hard to see novelty in regular surroundings and in standard routines.

The agency of the artist is key. Accidental art is not a concept I am familiar with. An artist can come up with a piece of art that is much better than he had expected, but he must be participating in the creative process in a decisive way. In fact, that is one reason why Artificial Intelligence cannot create art. It has no agency. There is no artist. No artist, no art.

One can be awed by a beautiful view of nature, like I tend to be when looking over George Town from Penang Hill in the evening mist. But there is no art. God does not do art. Art comes when I snap a picture of that scene. Art is man’s prerogative.

I need to shift my mind out of work-life weekday mode into creative mode. Holding a dedicated camera would help that along. But what would help even more is to go somewhere unexpected scenes can appear.

Walking in the forest always helps. The lighting through the trees can be unexpectedly flirty, the animals that turn up can take unexpectedly interesting postures, and scenes can appear which are often unexpectedly novel.

Taking a trip always helps, even if it is only to some place I am familiar with. It is about my state of mind, not about what the world has to offer an amateur photographer. It is always offering something, but I am not always in the right frame of mind.

Visual Versus Verbal

Getting myself feeling creative is key. Choice of attire is often helpful as well. A good breakfast too. You start the day geared up to be artistic, chances are, you will find the world inspiring.

I also find people inspiring when I am in an absorbent mood. Such inspiration need not be direct, it can come from unexpected angles and stimulate unexpected corners of my mind.

While photography often requires me to go places where visual stimulation can excite me, writing does not. Getting into the creative mode to write is actually much harder than getting into location to press the shutter button.

This, I believe, is because writing involves language, and the mind is always captured by language. In that sense, the process of writing is always ongoing. It involves inputs, it involves juggling of thoughts and it involves outputs.

A writer who does not read makes things impossible for himself. He is like a half-blind photographer. If you feed yourself with good language, your writing and spoken output will tend to be of good quality. The writing process requires a lot of testing of thoughts and turns of phrases in one’s head—for consistency, for sustained rationality, for consequence. In that sense, a writer’s job is never done, and he is never on holiday.

For such a person, taking up photography as the yin to the yang of his language obsession is good advice. While a writer can sit at his desk and read and write, a photographer would do well to travel—be it from this end of the room to the other end, or from this corner of the world to the other.