Here’s the scenario: You’re walking through the lower passage of the Bethesda Terrace in Central Park. Suddenly, the sun finally pokes through the unceasing cloud coverage that you’ve seen throughout the day. Just as your foot touches the last step of the staircase, an opera singer in the middle of the passageway begins singing “Ave Maria” as a sliver of sunlight shines down on her. The atmosphere in the room becomes sacred as she fills it with her ethereal voice. You take out your phone or raise you camera and take a couple pictures of what’s around you. These are the moments that I want to preserve forever, and my way of doing that is by taking a picture.
The fact of the matter is that our memories are not infinite. At the moment of our death, they disappear into oblivion and the moments that we endlessly replay in our minds fade away. We can tell other people about our experiences in hopes that they pass down our stories, but we can never truly show someone what it was like in that very moment.
To me, photography is an art of memory keeping. It is not just about how a picture looks or aesthetics (which is not in itself a bad reason to take photos). I’ m so passionate about taking and sharing my photos because I want others to be able to appreciate the beauty that I witnessed in that moment. I want to transport a person who looks at my photograph into that split second in time.
The other thing I truly love about taking photos is that anyone can do it. All you have to do is buy yourself a camera. While you most likely won’t be taking high quality photos at first, there is always room for development and learning new methods. Every time you snap a photo, you learn something new. Half of the time you may not even know what you’re doing (which is honestly how I take my photos) and find that you learn a new technique to use in the future or take a photo differently. As you become better at taking photos, you become a better memory keeper by making sure that the photo resembles exactly what you experienced.
There’s no feeling like getting home from a long shoot and looking at the photos you’ve taken over the course of the day. You can recount exactly where you were, what you saw, who you talked to, and what you were feeling. Now apply this to the future when you can’t exactly recall a specific memory. Fortunately you have those photographs as references to remind you of those things.
Let’s go back to the original scenario with the opera singer performing underneath the top tier of the Bethesda Terrace. What if you didn’t take that photo and as you aged you forgot about that amazing instance. No one around you would be able to perfectly recount that moment; but a picture could bring back that memory. That is why I enjoy photography. One day I may not be able to remember all of the phenomenal things that I’ve seen with my own two eyes; and one day I may not be here to even try to recount those sights. I want those finite memories to turn into something infinite.
