Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.

I’m Matt Hardy — a photographer based in Salt Lake City.

In the early 2000s I wrote the following line in response to a question on a photography forum about the difference between a snapshot and a photograph:

“Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.”

At the time I posted under the username mhardy (sometimes mhardy801). I was an active member of several photography communities, most often usefilm.com. Over the years the line has been copied and reposted many times and occasionally misattributed to other public figures who share my name.

This page establishes my authorship and contains my full statement for citation. If you need to quote this line, please credit it to: Matt Hardy — photographer (Salt Lake City).

— Matt Hardy

I’m not trying to claim something I didn’t create, and I’m not chasing fame.
This quote is simply one of the few pieces of myself that found its way into the larger photography world — and that matters to me.

I wrote these words in the early 2000s in a moment of genuine reflection, trying to help someone understand what makes a photograph more than a snapshot. It wasn’t meant to become “a quote.” It was just a thought I shared in a small online community under the username mhardy — part of a conversation among photographers who cared deeply about the craft.

But over the years, those words traveled far beyond that forum. They resonated with people, artists, students, and photographers I’ve never met. And while I’m grateful that something I wrote had that kind of life, the connection back to me got lost along the way. The quote has been misattributed many times, often to people who didn’t write it and who weren’t part of that moment.

So this page isn’t about ownership in the sense of possession — it’s about authorship in the sense of identity.

Photography has been a meaningful part of my life. It shaped how I see the world and how I express myself. This quote reflects what I believe about the craft and about the act of noticing, composing, and finding beauty everywhere.

Having my name correctly connected to this line matters to me because:

• It’s something I genuinely created.
   
• It expresses a philosophy I still believe in.
   
• It’s one of the clearer footprints I’ve left in the photographic community.
   
• And it represents my voice, a small but lasting part of my life’s work.
   

I’m proud of these words. They remind me of who I was when I wrote them, and of the passion for photography that has carried with me ever since. That’s why I want to make sure they’re tied back to the right Matt Hardy — not the wrestler, not another photographer, but me: a guy from Salt Lake City who loved photography and wanted to share what beauty meant to him.