And SomeWhen.
Finding the pot of gold means a bit of good luck. And keeping your eyes open. And having a camera in your pocket 24/7. And stopping in the rain to step out of your car in the middle of a county road to save the moment.
I once reflected on the place of photographs in my life:
“Film became a way to preserve present moments in a clear resin of recall. Every photograph set a benchmark in time, held a unique instant in the emulsion of memory, captured in perfect synchrony that vertical line of precise moment that intersects the coordinates of particular place.”
It may be maudlin and saccharine, but Kodak moments anchor us in person, place, space and time. And I am thankful to have had more than my share of them.
And a bit more of the reflection on time (from What We Hold in Our Hands):
“No two photographic markers were the same, and there was no going back. With my lens, I fished from the moving stream of time as days flowed through the faces I knew, past the places I loved, leaving the lived, the known moments bobbing on its glassy surfaceÑdeeper down, farther back, receding Doppler-like across a realm that I could photograph, could know just once, just now.
I have spent decades more behind the camera, no longer wishing I were older, happy for the past, but savoring photographic instants in the present when one face or one flower, one sunset, yet another family pet or one more grandchild’s candle-covered birthday cake fills the viewfinder and moves on downstream.”
Film? Did you say film? I seem to remember something called that, way back before the turn of the century. 🙂
For some strange reason, I miss taking a photo, then taking my film off to be developed. It was always such a wonderful experience to pick them up, and look at the finished product. I was never a person to let them molder in a shoe box, instead, I faithfully placed the best ones in an album. Today, I can hardly be bothered to shuffle them into folders on my computer!
I still put my best photos in albums. So many memories are captured by the visual in my mind that is actually the photo of the event. All the past seems equally distant when I review my memories triggered by photos. I am so glad to have my past, with all its richness.