Photography gives us the power to freeze a moment in time, but what is the purpose of freezing a moment in time if not to cherish that moment - to look back and relive the feelings and thoughts that we were filled with at the time.
Shooting at home
Capture a memory over simply a moment.
In this post entitled 'MEMORY AND THE SENSES: WHICH ONE IS STRONGEST?', Christian Roemer explains how our sense of vision is not high on the list of senses when talking about memory.
With smell, taste and touch in the top three, our visual memory is actually quite poor. Capturing a moment visually with a photograph is a really good way to have visual memory triggered and 'topped up' so-to-speak.
In a recent documentary on Netflix - Memory Explained, Neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps explained that - even in important moments of our lives, over the course of a year, 50% of the details of a visual memory can change.
It becomes a part of history.
Capturing as a record
Sometimes the moment a photograph is taken there isn't any immediate value to the image. This is one of the reasons I truly love using film to capture my imagery. I believe that if I'd taken this picture on a digital camera I'd have probably deleted it immediately, deciding that it had no compositional qualities to it. As it happens, this photograph was shot on film. It's not likely, but let's say years down the line this park becomes a housing estate or a road or overpass is put down through the middle. At that point this image becomes special. It becomes a part of history. It becomes a story of life in that area that can only be imagined.
Take Away
Go out in your area or somewhere special to you and take some pictures of places that mean a lot to you or even simply places that you visit often. In years to come when the little cafe that you had your first date in has been knocked down or the park bench that you experienced your first ham and pickle sandwich has rotted away, you will be glad that you did.
Go capture history!
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