Photography. What is a photograph? Is it the result of clicking the shutter in any camera or phone or the result of extensive post-shooting work in Photoshop? Recently I saw some very nice shots from the Velodrome, Rio but it causes me to ask – Can I have his seat at a Velodrome, Please? I’ve looked for a Velodrome locally without success. I don’t say my shots would be as good as this particular professional photographers but I think I’d have snapped some nice ones – and that’s with my kit – not his much more expensive kit.

Suppose, back in the day, I was the only shooter at the raising of the Mary Rose. Are my pictures ordinary or FANTASTIC! – given the subject matter and exclusivity?

I wonder what a pro shooter would make photographically of the Village Green outside Parish Hall? Would it be Amazing!?

Every time I look at great shots they are so often of subject matter forbidden to me by cost or distance. They are invariably exotic. I can’t compete.

The Velodrome shots are very nice – the 4 cyclists in a line, very appropriate and varied blur on the following racers etc. Great stuff but I’ll never be able to compare to see if I’d even come half way close.

I look for photo blogs where the photographer has taken ordinary shots and done something special via light/angle. I struggle to find them.

Recently the local photographic club (a little village photographic club) gave 1st prize for a picture of a Zulu in full regalia sitting atop a Zebra and 2nd prize to a shot looking down from a NY City skyscraper. Have all local shots been exhausted?

And while I’m on the subject I see that Google images joins together several similar shots at the same time and turns them into a short movie. Is video the future of still photography? Why spend ages looking for the moment the subject looks relaxed or smiles naturally – simply video the subject from all angles whilst considering the light source and where the light is falling. Then go through hundreds or thousands of stills from the video’s 10 frames a second and pick out the best ones?

I shot a wedding recently and missed the couple’s first kiss. This was in part due to my position but also to the fact the kiss was unexpected at the particular point in the ceremony and over so quickly. If I’d been videoing I’d have caught something.

I could shoot a wedding single shot on SLR and a non-photographer could walk beside me with an iPhone set to video. That person would take the same shots but using video. We’d go into post production and my three shots of the same subject might not be that inspiring – one has the subject blinking, the second one no smile and in the third the eyes are looking away from the camera. The video person has hundreds more frames in HD of the same 10 seconds it took me to take my three shots. Amongst his hundreds of frames are great shots with no blinking, great smiling and looking straight into the camera. Those shots are better than mine but is it photography? The happy couple, though, look at both sets and chose the video source every time – they are the better shots.

I’m not a fan of video replacing the still. I just wonder.

The news channels ask for the public’s footage of local incidents (usually tragedies) when no press were present and they mean mobile phone video. They’ll take single shot but far prefer video.

The recommendation for shooting astrophotography is to film (say) the moon or a planet on a laptop via a video camera attached to the lens of a telescope. The data file is then uploaded into a programme like Registax or similar and the thousands of images are checked by the software and either rejected as blurred (too much atmospheric movement between subject and camera – it is a long way from my back garden to the Moon!) or stacked one on top of another until a firm composite image is formed – possibly of hundreds of images. That image is then further processed and you have your finished photo. But is that photography?