[georgemcbay]

"A photograph is something that the artist creates, not something that he takes of a particular thing."

To be pedantic, it can be either.

I do hobby photography that I take fairly seriously ( http://gmcbay.com/ ), but sometimes I really just take a snapshot of a thing just to document that thing, without thinking about the lighting or the composition or anything -- just want to post it up on ebay or facebook or whatever for illustration, not trying to have it be "art".

Many (probably most?) photographs are in the "taken" group as opposed to the "created", I'd think.