There’s a moment in one of my favorite old television shows of all time, Psych, where the main character (a character I am not afraid to admit I relate to and often resemble way, way too much) Shawn tells the woman he loves, who is about to go on a trip to Europe without him:
“Take lots of pictures. Not of sights. Don't take pictures of buildings. Take pictures of moments, because that's what matters.”
I remember the first time I saw that scene, I remember the first time I heard that advice, and I remember, strangely, tearing up at it. Take pictures of moments. If I’m honest, this little nugget of wisdom never left me, and to this day, shapes the way I approach photography, the way I do my job when I photograph weddings, people, places, travel, adventure, or whatever else. In truth, shooting this way has been the way I always have, but hearing it spoken aloud, solidified in me the ethos behind our original company, Treehouse Photography, and more than continued as we grew and became Chasers of the Light. It’s always been the moments for us, the tiny little unspoken seconds that we try to borrow long enough to give them back to those we take pictures of. When shooting a wedding, it’s those moments we seek out above all others, the little glances, the nervous fingertips, the grazes of skin, the tiny explosions of grace.
When we travel, it’s the very same. We call ourselves Chasers of the Light because we’ve spent over a decade doing precisely that. Light is the shifter of all moments, the magician that comes in and transforms a place, a person, a memory. We chase this shift, we study it, we wait for it patient as prey hiding for survival, and when that moment comes, we do our very best to capture it. What’s strange is, as our art has evolved I have noticed that the moments we walk away with are starting to become Only those we felt compelled to snap, only those we weren’t so lost in with our actual eyes, that we remembered to make an image. More than ever before, our cameras sit quiet at our side, our fingers seek each others hands more than the lenses, we sit quiet, we watch, we remember. Moments, friends, moments.
I have a sneaking suspicion, that if you were to look back over the moments You’ve chosen to photograph, the times that took Your breath away, you’d begin to find common threads. They say if you wish to know what someone loves, look at what they photograph, and I couldn’t agree more. Maybe it’s time we all went back and looked through our cameras, our phones, and studied what we photograph more than anything else. Maybe we should go over the moments that truly took our breath away, and find out how to make more of those moments in the future. Maybe its this alignment that will put us on the path towards a happiness immeasurable.
In a sense, I think this is also what my poetry has always been. I think it’s always been these slivers of moments, these tiny times that took my breath away, that realigned what magic meant, what was worth living for, what was worth crying over, what was worth remembering. I think with all the art I’ve ever created, I’ve been after the same thing in the end, a stolen second of a stunning life. A pause, if you will. I have no way of knowing if these wishes landed, if what I tried to do with the words I chose actually worked, but I will remain hopeful and I will remain ready. I point myself at the moments that matter the most to me, with lens or with pen, and I do my best to capture them in a way that feels true, feels real, feels as big on the outside as it did on the inside. I hope it’s working, and I suppose, it’s up to you to decide if it is or not.
For now, there are moments waiting, and I’ve more to do. See you out there.
Photos of moments,
times that took our breath away,
stolen forever.
Song of the Week
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Photos Of Moments | 9.5.21