Alexandersmap

    Tag: Photography

    • Slicing Out the Moment

      “All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” ― Susan Sontag

      There’s a cool feature in iPhone photos where you can view the map of where your thousands of photographs were taken, with thumbnails of the photos overlaying the spot it was geolocated. It’s a great reminder of where we’ve been and what we saw at the time we were there. It’s a momentary slice of our lives from the past, and we get to relive it with a virtual flyover as we zoom in on the place. And in doing so, the pictures from that place come back to us like a flood of memories.

      I’ve taken tens of thousands of photographs, mostly with my collection of iPhones since those became the technology that replaced a camera. But my Instagram feed is only at 1700 posts. We all save the best pictures to show others, don’t we? But that particular platform isn’t always friendly when formatting our favorite pictures, and so they fail to make the cut. Not so with our library, where with time and patience we can scroll through everything to find memories.

      I’m that person at parties and family gatherings taking all the pictures. I do it because I know the moment will soon be gone like all the rest but some fragment of it may live on. I’ve captured people no longer with us, full of hope and happiness or sometimes with a knowing look that this may be the last photo you’ll get of them. My favorite Navy pilot once observed this as I insisted on taking his picture with his grandchildren. It would be years before he passed, but his belief in my motivation for taking the picture stayed with me and does to this day.

      The thing is, all of our past moments are dead and gone. The people and places live on within us for as long as we are alive, and then we in turn live on in others for as long as they are. Beyond that is beyond all of us to know. Immortality isn’t ours to achieve, but our image may live on beyond the living memory of all who knew us. So too may our words, should we be so bold as to write them down for all to see.

      We all know the score. Tempus fugit (time flies), memento mori (remember we all must die) and so the only reasonable answer is carpe diem (seize the day). Capturing a few images along the way allows us to look back on a life well-lived and trigger memories that may have faded. Memories of places and people and moments that once were our entire life for an instant and now a layer of our identity, gently folded within us for the rest of our days.

    • Sharing Moments, After

      “I’ve never taken a photograph of someone and created a persona, I’ve just discovered what was already there.” ― Anthony Farrimond

      I’ve been known to take a few pictures in my time. As with writing, it helps me focus on the things around me in a way I might not otherwise. I have friends that send me pictures of sunsets that they’re not putting on social media as a reminder that I tend to put a lot of such pictures on social media. I celebrate the ribbing, for it means I’m doing my part to share a bit of beauty and positivity in a world full of people inclined to share ugly and negative. That’s not us, friends. We’re here to light the world during our shift.

      During occasions when family and friends come together, my attention shifts from pictures of nature’s beauty to the beautiful souls around me. There’s a fine line between being a part of the party and being apart from the party, and I try to stay in the moment while capturing some of it. Stopping a conversation for a picture can be disruptive, but if done well it might enhance and draw people together. When done well it captures the illusive and fragile moments we have together. Looking back on pictures from the last few years, it’s striking how many people are no longer with us. We can’t control fate, but we can capture moments before it intervenes.

      At a Christmas Eve party just last night I was talking to someone about some of the settings in an iPhone. They shared a few tips that I immediately started trying. In portrait mode you can tap on someone’s face and everything in the background blurs, highlighting the face or faces you’ve chosen to focus on. It’s a nice trick that brings a measure of professional photography to the amateur. Perhaps my favorite thing about it is that focus. As in an intimate conversation, you’re drawn completely into the world of the person you’re focused on. In such moments we capture something more than the moment, we capture a glimpse into their soul.

      I’m not a great photographer (I know too many great photographers to claim such mastery for myself), but I take enough pictures that I get a few good ones worth sharing. The way I look at it, that picture is a time machine, shared after the moment, carrying life force from one moment to another. That after moment might be turning the image around to show those you’ve just taken a picture of what it looks like, or it might be our great-grandchildren feeling the love through the eyes of a long-lost ancestor. This is the nature of photography, it tends to outlast us.

      As the photographer in such moments, as with writing, one hopes for mastery, but accepts the best we can deliver in the present. Don’t we owe it to each other to capture our best moments together? Having captured an image, it becomes a gift for others in moments after.