“I have often felt a little uncomfortable with using the conventional vocabulary to describe taking photos, such as: ‘aiming’, ‘pointing’, ‘shooting’, ‘capturing’, because these words seem to be associated with an underlying metaphor of hunting or war, with the camera figured as a kind of gun. Of course, I know this doesn’t mean that photography described in this way is inherently violent or aggressive, but I believe that the way we talk about things is connected to how we think and feel about them, so I prefer to use a different language.For example, my photography is more akin to the slow process of foraging and preserving, which is why I named my Instagram account ‘Jonathan Pickles the City’. When speaking to other photographers, I have noticed much difference and variation in how they talk about what they do, with some preferring to describe photos as ‘images’, or to say ‘make’ or ‘create’ instead of ‘take’ a photo.This specific and conscious use of language appears to reveal something about how they understand photography, about the kind of images they make and their relation to the world as they photograph it. To find out more, I asked nine photographers to describe how they see their own practice.”