[Kenneth Ellis]

"A pencil only holds graphite, lead, charcoal, etc, while a camera has to control focus, shutter speed, flash settings, color, writing an image to a memory card, etc. What you are referring to in your last sentence is composition."

You're stuck on the technical level instead of the artistic, which is the aim of the article, and this conversation. Instead of seeing the forest, you see a bunch of individual trees.

What the pencil "holds" is no less than what the camera "holds". A pencil carries every aspect that a camera does in the matter of presentation of an image. It's usage covers the gamut of light, color, depth of field, and it's very usage is the recording of the scene. What it does NOT do, and what camera does NOT do, is CREATE the image that is artistically strong.

I know that when I take a picture that actually conveys feeling, or when I sketch one, that it was MY talent that found the art, not the engineer of the camera's internals or the chemist that came up with the right graphite to carrier mix. It was me. If you want to think it's the camera, that's your prerogative.