Taking Pictures

I like taking pictures.  You know.  The kind you take when you haul your camera around on a vacation.  Those kind.  There is something to this taking pictures that has always fascinated me.  From the simple Kodak Instamatic camera (just pop in the film cartridge and away you go!) I used while in high school to the SLR Mamiya Sekor I bought when I was in my early 20s to the rather unique Rolleiflex camera I had for a few years, I still enjoy taking pictures with my Nikon Coolpix digital camera (having the distinction of traveling with me up the trail to Half Dome).

But what is it about “taking pictures” that captures us?  We end up with boxes of photos, some of which end up in prized photo albums so that we can relive those moments captured in a split second of time.  We get them out on an annual basis believing that to look at the memories of yesterday helps us to better appreciate the present.

Do it now.  Go find a stack of photos that you’ve kept in a forgotten drawer, in an old shoebox, in one of those photo albums.  Sit down and get ready to relive the past.  Look at the photos you’ve found.  Take them out and hold them in your hand.  It’s history there, you know.  Some make you smile deep inside, some make you cry, some make you laugh.  These remarkable pieces of history – our history – captured forever on small pieces of photographic paper.  You don’t stop here, though.  Your inner self wants more.  You spread the photos out on a table, you flip through more pages in that album.  If you keep photos on your computer, you click through to see more of them.

Take the album I came across recently that was originally put together by my father who made it for his mother while he entered World War II in the 1940s.  While looking at page after page, I saw my father look back at me, being with his pals, a couple of he, his mother and father.  I saw him as a young man about to go to war as he posed for photos taken at boot camp.

Just looking at him in these photographs reminded me why I like taking pictures.  It’s not so much a hobby.  It’s my way of preserving those special moments in life that, quite literally, last a split second.  A fraction of a second that lasts a lifetime.

Advertisement