Photographing

How to spell photographing

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce photographing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does photographing mean?

1. verbTaking a picture of someone or something using a camera.

Photographing in a sentence

• She spent the afternoon photographing the old harbour for her portfolio.

• The journalist was photographing the protest when the rain started.

Where does photographing come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word builds on 'photograph', a term coined in 1839 by the English scientist Sir John Herschel from two Greek roots: phos (with the stem phot-) meaning 'light', and graphein meaning 'to write' or 'to draw'. Put together, a photograph is literally something 'drawn by light', which is exactly what happens when light strikes a sensitive surface and leaves an image. The verb 'to photograph' followed quickly, and the present participle 'photographing' simply adds the ordinary -ing ending. The 'ph' spelling in both halves of the word is the giveaway of its Greek pedigree, since Greek phi was regularly rendered as 'ph' when such words passed through Latin into English. The same phot- root also gives us 'photon' and 'photosynthesis', while graphein survives in 'paragraph', 'biography', and 'graphic'.

How the word is built

• photo- (light)
• graph (write/draw)
• -ing (present participle suffix)