Photographing Time

Excuse me if I might've covered this topic before.

My interest in photography goes back a long, long way. I think, looking back, that what might have prompted that interest was an older cousin of mine, who owned a fancy camera. It was a Zeiss Contax II with a 50mm Sonnar f/2 lens. A fine piece of mechanical and optical engineering that even in the modern world of whizbang electronic digital autofocus auto-exposure ultrazoom gizmos deserves a second look. (My apologies, I often get carried away talking about stuff like that.)

But it's also possible that this interest in photography comes from a subconscious desire on my part to keep time at bay. Maybe I hoped to just capture pieces of it, if that were feasible, since it is unstoppable. By preserving those moments, some to be cherished in later years, others ordinary, trite or easily forgotten, that mark our brief passage through this world.

I love taking pictures of any kind. Stills, movies, anything that you can turn a lens on. There is beauty in our world, even in the smallest things visible to the eye.

Like art, photography provides the means to imprison that beauty for the future.