noun: photography
the art or practice of taking and processing photographs.

So all of us are familiar with social networks like Facebook where you snap a photo of your self showcasing how awesome you are in a single frame. A friend of mine takes a lot of selfies and calls it photography. I was sitting there thinking to myself, does taking a selfie on your phone 45 times in a 5 minute span count as photography? I mean according to the definition you're only able to take 50% credit of it being photography. You are in fact taking a picture, however, you aren't processing anything. Another point I'd like to make is that taking a selfie really requires NO skill at all. The average joe can do it. Okay to put it in perspective, if your grand parents can do it, anyone can. So to call your selfies photography doesn't reall seem fitting. It doesn't require any practice or skill what so ever unless you're that horrible at pointing the phone at your face instead of the brick wall behind you. It also really isn't that artistic. Sure, there are people with some really creative selfies and facebook pictures. A common classic is visiting a world wonder and standing in just the right spot to make it look like you're holding a pyramid or squeezing the Eiffel Tower. While those are quite amusing and do require some sort of effort, is it still considered photography?

When I put the title of photography on something, I identify it through several things. Say I'm looking at photos of landscapes, wedding ceremonies, family portraits, abstract close ups with a low-fi lense, etc... and these photos are part of a persons personal portfolio showcasing all of the work they've done. This person uses a professional camera and uses different shutter settings and lens' based on the type of shot and medium it is.  A person who has a degree in the field of photography or is famous for their work. THAT is what I consider photography. Taking pictures of you and your friends getting drunk in a basement and uploading it to your facebook and twitter, isn't exactly what I would call photography. It's not in focus, it required little to no effort considering you cut your friends face off in the picture and instead of taking another one you figured that one was good enough. I mean, I don't take offense easily but I can imagine that if someone who is a legitimate photographer saw these facebook albums of peoples selfies and random photo-filter pictures and saw it labeled photography, would probably take offense to it.

And there's apps like instagram and programs such as photoshop that allow you to edit and manipulate photos and put filters and cool effects on them to make your sandwich look 10x more appetizing to the dumbass scrolling on your news feed. However, using those tools don't suddenly make you such a great photographer. I mean sure maybe you and a professional photographer could take the same exact picture and get the same exact results and praise for it. The difference is that they went to school, used a professional camera and technique and all you did was whipped out your phone, put a filter called Henry on it and called it a day. I won't deny using filters. I use filters on my selfies and on food porn (that's what I call pictures of food lol) and other things but I'm not going to label it photography. With technology constantly on the rise and improving it's getting easier and easier to acquire high quality things with less work required. As the years go on the quality of resolution and cameras goes up and the skill needed to achieve tasks goes down. How do pro photographers feel about that? Does it bother you that you devoted your entire life to creating extremely unique and beautiful pictures for people all over the world to marvel at and some 14 year old spoiled brat is making the same exact type of picture at the same quality with .000000001% of the effort that you put in? You might fly from the US to Australia to take a picture of this gorgeous sunset that you chanced upon while this little kid is sitting on his porch taking a picture of a normal generic sunset and puts a filter on it and now it looks just as epic as yours does and all he did was snap, filter and upload.  Now that you've taken your photo, now you're developing the film in a dark room, you have to wait for it to fully process or maybe you have a digital camera (because you aren't a hipster) and you do a little cropping, editing and clean up work and then you upload it as well. How do you feel about this effort exchange?

So my question is: can any picture regardless of who takes it, what the content is, what equipment/medium they used, how they took the picture etc... is it photography? If I took a picture of a piece of string and it was out of focus, maybe dark in the room and so it just looked like a dark red blur, is it photography? Or am I just a douchebag uploading a picture and calling it photography because it makes me sound like I'm cool or something because I took a fucking picture with my phone half assed? What are your thoughts? What is the deciding factor on what is photography and what isn't?