Snapshot (photography)

A snapshot is a photograph that is "shot" spontaneously and quickly, most often without artistic or journalistic intent and usually made with a relatively cheap and compact camera. Common snapshot subjects include the events of everyday life, often portraying family members, friends, pets, children playing, birthday parties and other celebrations, sunsets, tourist attractions and the like. Snapshots can be technically "imperfect" or amateurish: poorly framed or composed, out of focus, and/or inappropriately lighted by flash. Automated settings in consumer cameras have helped to obtain a technologically balanced quality in snapshots. Use of such settings can reveal the lack of expert choices that would entail more control of the focus point and shallower depth of field to achieve more pleasing images by making the subject stand out against a blurred background. Snapshot photography can be considered the purest form of photography in providing images with the characteristics that distinguish photography from other visual media — its ubiquity, instantaneity, multiplicity and verisimilitude. When photography was introduced in 1839, exposure times took several minutes. To obtain a reasonably clear image, the camera could not be handheld and the photographer looked through the back of the camera under a black cloth before loading a sensitive plate, while his subjects had to stay totally still. Special head-rests and arm-rests could be used, and even if a subject managed to stay comfortable under these circumstances, they had to try to keep their facial expression in check if they wanted their features to properly show on the picture. This made it impossible to capture any spontaneity. During the following decades, many kinds of improvements —such as increased light-sensitivity of emulsions, quicker lenses and automatic shutters— were developed by experimental photographers who hoped to capture sharp details that would previously get smeared by motion blur.