“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you’ve caught on film is captured forever…. it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything!”
-Aaron Siskind.
I recently read that quote somewhere (I can’t remember exactly where) and I have taped it over my computer and also post-it noted it to the bottom of my computer screen and on my desk just so I can be sure I read it just about every day! I’m so grateful for that small little two sentence quote. It’s no secret that I adore photographs and photography. I am a photographer after all but sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the day to day clutter. Each day has it’s own temper and lately, I make no bones or no secret about it, we’ve been having a hard time with our days temper.
It’s easy for me to forget sometimes WHY I love photography and that Aaron Siskind really nails it on the head with his eloquent words there. We take for granted every day we get with our loved ones. We take for granted all the small, wonderful, unique qualities about them and each time we take a quick picture those wonderful qualities are forever captured! That moment of laughter, those long beautiful eyelashes, those freckles, that baby tooth that was pulled out two days ago…
In a world that moves at such fast pace we are so incredibly blessed to have so many cameras right at our finger tips, ready and available right at the snap of a finger to capture any moment we choose~
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how I am blessed to be able to give the GIFT of pictures and really the gift of remembering to families! Each time a family steps in front of my camera I am able to give them the gift of time! Time where they can look back years from now and see exactly how things were. Time where they can FREEZE their babies just as they are! Time where they can capture belly laughter, time together, play, magic, wonder, and all those little details of love frozen in just that single moment!
Time that years from now their babies will be able to HOLD in their hands when they are grown up adults! This always amazes me. I always think about Linc looking at pictures of the two of us years from now and seeing what he looked like as a tiny little baby and noticing the features that he might have carried over. I see him looking at pictures from those moments and seeing my young, tired mother face and if he recognizes any of his same features possibly (I have my mom’s eyes and her smile). I also wonder if he will still see the same me but maybe with a few wrinkles 😉
Sometimes I think we get so caught up in making sure we have the PERFECT picture that we end up not taking the picture at all or deciding that we don’t need to be IN the picture because we ourselves aren’t picture perfect. Maybe we don’t take the picture because we don’t have the perfect picture taking gear! Gosh, I know I’m guilty of that: I didn’t bring my “big girl” professional camera with me so I decide to skip out on capturing the memories of the day rather than use what I have which might be my phone. The only thing that matters is that actual memory itself and that on years from now if you wanted to be able to hold that memory, really experience it for all the details that it was, you could! And that means capturing it with whatever camera you had!
The perfect picture is the one you have taken with whatever camera you had on hand for that is the perfect camera!
This year I’m learning that it doesn’t matter what I look like, what camera I’m using or if it’s perfect or not. It doesn’t matter even if I can remember the day in great detail… because I can’t always remember! But a picture can and a picture will remember forever, even if my memory fades over time!
This year over the summer Linc and I went home to VB to visit my parents! Linc (of course) got his weird fever syndrome sickness as soon as we got off the plane. We had a crazy few days while we were there but there was one beautiful day that we got to spend on the beach with my mom! This was a day that I had always wanted! A day that was my childhood replayed right for Linc! My heart was so beautifully happy and my cup was so full that day. We only went down for a few hours in the morning but it was the perfect day. I was only able to capture a few pictures with my camera but the ones I did capture were priceless for so many reasons, reasons that I could never fully express in words.
Linc learned to body surf that day and he also learned to “boogie board” as we called it when I was little but I don’t think it’s cool to call it that anymore! He was fearless and that’s crazy because last year he wouldn’t even go NEAR the ocean let alone neck deep in the waves. But what was more incredible is that my mom went out with him and helped to actually push him into the waves on his body board like she used to do for me when I was so little. THIS IS EXACTLY what I think Aaron Siskind was talking about when he said photography is a way of feeling, of touching and of loving.
The moments I was able to capture of the two of them out in that ocean, I am able to hold those images that are now printed and feel everything I could never try to express in words. I feel what I felt as a child when my mom would push me into the waves in the same way she is now pushing my own son. I feel a sense of love like no other as I watch her with him and wondered IF there would ever be a time when we would be able to do this. And I know that I have these moments frozen in time forever and not just for me but for my parents too!
Photographs are amazing and so often I think people underestimate them!
I can always come back and re-visit and usually whatever image I am holding will bring me right back to that moment. It will bring me back to exactly that moment of love!
What about you? Do you have images that do this for you?
