What Photography Means to Me

 I believe that photography is the act of creating, keeping, and experiencing cherished memories. Photos are used in a multitude of ways to help people do their jobs, like physicists who use photos to see science at work or astronauts taking pictures of the earth from space to better understand the world we live in. However, I can't see photography as anything else but a time capsule. A way to preserve memories better and clearer than our minds ever could. Photography is so personal because it's your choice in what you decide to take a photo of. It grants the freedom of choosing which memories you wish to forever cherish. 

Sometimes, I would scroll through my gallery, observing all the pictures I have taken over the years, and lots of times I would find images I couldn't recall taking, events I never remembered happening. But as soon as I looked at the image, it allowed me to piece together the context of that image. It gave me memories of events long ago, of things I did and people I saw, things I would've forgotten forever if it wasn't for those photos.  It also brings back emotions. Joy, pain, sorrow, regret, happiness, etc. So many complicated emotions that memories alone couldn't preserve. How could I feel sad about an event if it happened so long ago, I no longer remembered it? That's the beauty of photography to me. 

Photography is also another way to experience the world without the costs, whether that's the time, money, or sacrifice necessary to experience those aspects of the world. As explained by Marvin Heiferman in his essay Photography Changes Everything, "To see life, to see the world, to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things - machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon..." How could I understand history without seeing pictures of the past? How could I appreciate the present and hope for the future without photographs lighting the way? It's thanks to photography that humans can understand the world around them. If it wasn't for the pictures of other planets, galaxies, and the cosmos, I would always be limited in perspective. I would always think that Earth is the only thing that exists and will exist when in reality, our universe is bigger than we can ever fathom. Photography brings to light gorgeous sights that are too dangerous to be explored by normal people, such as the aurora borealis in Antarctica, or the sea creatures that dwell deep in the ocean. I deeply appreciate photography for what it has brought for me and what it will continue to provide in the future.