Life never stops; it just keeps moving. It won't stand still. As we read each of these words, they effortlessly move from our present to our past. The word we read, the breath we just took, the thought we just had, are in motion; moving from now to then.These thoughts have come out of my year of embracing photography. I love shooting. I do it for fun, for money, for others and sometimes just for me. And as I have been somewhat surprised as to how much I enjoy this new hobby, I have asked myself, "Why? What is the big attraction?"
Then one day it hit me: I love to capture moments. That's why I love to write and likewise, that's why I love to take pictures.
Life is always moving, and as much as we'd like to stop and savor a moment, stop and stare at an expression, they're gone--always moving from now to "just a second ago" to "yesterday" to "last month" to "last year" to "our childhood" and so on.
But to write and to photograph is to grab and hold time in my hands. It's the gift of reliving a moment. It's reversing time; taking the past and bringing it back to the present. And seeing that moment in the stillness that wasn't possible in real time.
I don't write and photograph because I want to live in the past. It's because I so often miss the details, as life is ever moving. My mind would not have kept the simple image at the top of this post. (That dinner alone was an hour of mental video footage.)
As I capture moments, I better appreciate the nuance of all that is there, all that is happening. And hopefully I become keener at appreciating the next real time moment coming my way.
I capture moments.
