Selfie, Florence, 2011  

The terminology of photography also implicates the issues of accuracy and brevity.  As to the latter, it would be nice to describe the process of engaging in photography with words that are more efficient than "taking (or making) a photograph."  If you ask painters what they were doing, the tidy answer would be "painting."  Two syllables, one word.  Answering the same question, photographers would be unlikely to simply say "photographing;"  more likely they would say "taking pictures."   Or maybe "taking photographs."  It seems clumsy and graceless.  

Is there a better, briefer, phrase?  To explore that, first you have to decide what photographers do. In the old days (after Henry Fox Talbot invented the negative process), there were three stages: exposing a sensitized surface (film) to light, chemically processing that surface to obtain a negative, and using the negative to expose light-sensitive paper that was then processed chemically.  The print was the final product.  Taking a photograph could be just the first step; "making" a photograph implied all three.  Ignoring processes that took short-cuts (direct transparency - slide - film or Polaroids or paper negatives), a precise photographer might answer: "exposing a plate (or film)," "developing a plate (or film)," or "printing."  Collectively, "making a photograph" was pretty accurate.  

Now, in the digital age, the process is more ambiguous.  Now electronic sensors, when exposed to light, create digital signals that are recorded.  The recorded signals can be processed.  And the processed signals can be viewed as prints or on electronic screens.  

Is the process now: exposing the sensor, processing the recorded data, or printing or transmitting to a screen?  Or all of those things?

Will the careful, overly precise photographer therefore answer, when returning from the field: "I was exposing the sensor to light"? Or, "I was taking pictures"?  Is that good enough?  Maybe a single word (envy the painter) won't work.  "Exposing" in this day and age invites undue scrutiny.  "Printing" works for the final stage.  But Stage 2 is also awkward ("processing digital images").  

Most likely the photographer would not answer "capturing" people or a sunset or whatever unless he or she had been reading too much lately.  Few are self-deprecating enough to answer "taking snaps," although "snap" at least has onomatopoeic origins in the sound of a shutter opening and closing.  Shutters indeed snapped.  Now shutters are nearly silent although mirrors can make a racket.

So, about the lead image.  Point-and-shoot and smart-phone cameras all have, interestingly, digital snapping sounds meant to mimic the shutter of a film camera.  The selfie taken near the Uffizi Gallery by one of two young students (who are prominently ignoring the third student, to their right) is indeed a "snap," and it was instantly processed and transmitted to the screen of their camera.   Did she "make a photograph?"  Sure.  Is there a shorter, more accurate description of what she did?  Probably not.  Even "taking a snap," although accurate, is not much shorter.

The following three images also depict people taking "snaps."

Les Deux Magots, Paris, 2013

Le Tour de France, Paris, July 21, 2013

Gun Girl, Paris, 2014

But these people are making a photograph.  

The Bride's Shoes, Paris, 2014