Chasing The Light: Why I Take Pictures - Part 1
Moments come and go. But some moments hold more weight than others, shaping important parts of who we are. For me, taking pictures is a practice that allows me to better observe myself, others, and the world around me. Recently, I sat down to think about the moments that lead me to photography and how I became obsessed with chasing the light.
Life has a way of circling back to its beginning. As an adult, I’m fascinated by how many of my interests had roots in my early childhood. Photography is one of those seeds that was planted long ago.
I’ve never identified my father as a photographer. But I now realize he was exactly that. He had all the equipment, including a Vivitar 35mm film camera with several interchangeable lenses. More important than the gear, he had a passion for taking pictures.
As a small child, his equipment fascinated me. I remember how he let me hold the camera and take pictures. Often, he would task me with carrying his heavy camera bag, like a golf caddy who knew nothing about golf. Still, there was something about the clicking buttons and smooth, twisting controls on the lenses. Even as a child, the camera felt special; engineered like one of my father’s many collectible firearms. The weight and action told me this was a powerful tool.
There were other objects I prized, like the smooth little plastic containers that once held film rolls. Some were clear; most were black with gray lids. I collected these for storing tiny items like coins I found in the couch seats, bbs for my air rifle, and other miscellaneous treasures.
My father’s photography regularly pulled me out of the house as we made trips to drop off film at the local store. We deposited several rolls of film while picking up the previous visit’s newly developed pictures. Thumbing through new photographs and seeing them for the first time was always an exhilarating experience. There were landscape photos from trips, action photos from my brother’s football and track meets, and general documentation of daily life in my interesting home.
I always tried to fill out the large envelopes used to submit the film for processing, marking whether the film roll was black and white or color, noting the film speed, and number of exposures. I remember the strange glue on the resealable envelopes. Resealable envelopes. Technology was at its peak.
For as long as I can remember, we had loads of printed photos, stored mostly in several shoeboxes. This was the late 70s and early 80s, so we didn’t have smart phones to take pictures. There weren’t digital cameras, cell phones, or the internet. We relied on printed pictures to capture and revisit memories. My mother had two fancy photo albums reserved for the most important pictures, usually family photographs. Now that I think about it, my father must have had a camera well before this time, because we had photos of my older brothers as babies, a good six or seven years before I was even born.
My parents had little money growing up, but I never knew that as a child. My friends and school buddies all lived in the same neighborhood, and I seemed to have everything I needed. But photography must have been important to my father. If photography was anything like today, it was not a cheap endeavor.
The memories weren’t all pleasant. I remember being terrified when my father was atop our roof, taking pictures of lightning during several fierce electrical storms. Of course, the results were fascinating. When I think about some of the shots he captured on an old film camera, I’m impressed at the level of skill he had developed.
When I'm out taking pictures, I don't think about my childhood connection to photography, but I can't deny that my father planted a seed. I didn’t understand why my father took pictures. To me, it was all about capturing the moment. And while that is true for me as a photographer now, there really is so much more to it.
Capturing moments is not a straightforward process. For photographers, the camera is not a point and shoot tool that merely stops time. Photography requires the person to be a part of the process, to manipulate various parameters in order to capture something beautiful, powerful; moving. There is a journey the photographer undergoes that I never comprehended as a child. While a seed for taking pictures was planted, I had no way of understanding how this art form would one day change how I looked at the world.