It is no secret that I love photographs.  I do.  Some people have no use for them.  But I find them fascinating in every way.

Certainly, in these times, we are inundated with images.  The “Digital Age” is responsible for this.  Wholly, I think.

Long ago, the photographic image was a process.  It wasn’t something you snapped with your iPhone and cast into cyberspace to immediately find its way to the swarming hoards on Facebook.  No.

Mind you.  There is nothing wrong with this.  It is just must different from the beginnings.

Photography, in its early years,  was a premeditated, and deliberate process.  The shear logistics of getting your camera equipment to the “place” you wanted to shoot, was only the first step in all of this.

And before that…you had to make that conscious decision to capture something on film.

From that time on, the exposure and film settings had to be near perfect for an image to finally appear on negative, then to film.  All of this by the way of the dark room.  Hours of processing were involved.

I think that is why I especially love old photographs.  They evolved from concept to reality.

But the photograph in itself.  What is it really?  Fido, with a cheer leading costume on?  The birthday party of your three-year-old daughter?  Fall leaves in the Smokies?  A rainbow on the edge of the sea?

Is it merely documentation of an event?  Or is it the profound thought, that a fleeting moment in time, is forever, caught in stillness, in the 2nd dimension?

To me it is not as much about the “thing” as it is about the “time”…. the camera had captured something that, in all of infinity, has never happened before, and will never happen again.

Choose wisely, we should.  Not only where we aim our lenses, but also where we aim our purpose.

For time is passing.

“Photography is (a means by which we)…learn to see the ordinary” – David Bailey

“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” – Dorothea Lange

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” – Elliott Erwitt