If photos are our paintings, the world around us is our canvas, the brushes are the camera & lenses, but the colour and paint we draw from are light.
I haven’t always felt so deeply about photography, maybe it is the rush of the teens or the blur of the 20s, back then I felt I never had the patience to take a photo throughout those years of my life, but recently and slowly over the later years of my 20s, I started looking around and observing the world a bit more keenly, soaking up things and started appreciating everything around in the world even more patiently, and that is when I discovered the magic in photography and picked it up as a craft to explore.
Photography is art being created while playing with light, a fleeting moment when the entire world around you becomes your canvas to compose a moment in time. This is how I feel about the craft of photography. I am still learning about this, and while learning about it slowly and steadily, I am also learning about myself and how I feel, observe and connect with the world around me. It is as much the journey within me as a journey of composing the world around me. I, therefore, find the journey of photography a great way to self-reflect, develop awareness and resonate with things happening all around us.
I was recently looking at the technological and product improvements coming to modern cameras. While I was going through the new launches, I came across a product ad/video that blew my mind.
The voiceover in the video talks about photography as time travel. It describes photography as stealing photons of light from the moment and transporting them to the future. I loved this metaphor so much. It got me thinking about how precious moments are and freezing time is something only photography can do. There is so much of life always happening around us and it takes a keen, observant eye of emotion to see the world thrive around us and capture it. That is what great photographers do.
Time Freezing.
I still do not own a proper digital camera. Just got started easily by playing around and experimenting with my iPhone. But I do dream of getting my hands on a camera soon. It is fascinating to feel that the human love for tools is so inherent, it's this inherent trait that pushed the early homo sapiens to make stone tools intertwined on many levels with our species development impacting our physical, cognitive and social evolution. But what’s that got to do with photography, well the urge to hold a camera is still the same and using it to enhance our understanding of the world around us is also super intrinsic.
Now I want to share my opinion on the common debate, even though phone cameras can compose great photos, the tactility, and the feeling of using a camera is unbeatable. Period. I feel that experiencing things with more of our senses, the click, the tactility, the sound, helps create better outputs. A toll that engages more of our senses would become a better extension of our self while interacting with it and through it with the world.
While all these thoughts might be metaphorical to read, the takeaway for anyone reading through this is that photography or any craft could be so much more than how we see it. It could mean different things to different people but it can also help us discover ourselves in new ways. The two-way journey, as I’d like to call it, could be different things for different people, but having one is rewarding.
As I explore and experiment more with time freezing and light playing, I will hopefully share more thoughts on this.
You can explore some of the photos I’ve clicked here.