The photograph on the left is about 40 years old, plus or minus a few full moons. I still enjoy looking at it, and that is really the point of this post. You just don’t know what is going to hold your interest over the long haul.
If you take a thoughtful photograph of someone it can have a lifespan of many decades. It might even catch on with other people and be respected and valued more or less forever.
I’m not looking to the young people in my family to become curators, however. That is not their native disposition. Any prolonged interest in my work would be more likely to come from a person with Michelle’s sensitivities. Wait until you see her book on the antique public-square clock that was lovingly restored by a citizen of Granville, New York. She is a curator extraordinaire.
I spend a lot of time thinking about photography because it’s fun, and because I use it to reveal myself. What to photograph? Why? The second question leads happily to “Why not?”
People rush through their picture-taking with the same hasty abandon they might employ against a bag of Cheetos. Gulp! Gobble! Chug down a bottled-water chaser.
I see nothing wrong with this, but it does represent a missed opportunity to savor the experience of looking at something with a respectful mindset.
Here is a 40-year old picture that has life left in it, in my view. If you reflect on the possibility that your picture might hold up that long, you perhaps will feel a bit more kindness about the act of tripping the shutter. The kindness is for yourself, the subject of the photograph, the camera, and an expression of appreciation that through a series of miracles, all these things have come together.
Click! 