Stone to Paper to Sensor

Throughout the ages of image making… Wait a minute. Hasn’t "image making" always been around? It certainly appears that way as discoveries of carvings, drawings, pottery, sculptures, and the like in ancient stone dwellings, caves, and tombs are made every year.

Image making is not some new fangled thing just discovered by those who have picked up the craft of photography in the last 50 years. It is literally timeless. Of course the modes and methods of making images has changed from age to age, but one wonders if the purpose of it has changed at all.

Why did the ancients scrawl out in stone the depiction of the hunt? Why did those of the bronze age sculpt figures from stone and metal? Why did those in the dark and middle ages put pigment to cloth? Why did the photographer of 1800s expose light to plate?

They did so for one reason and that reason resides at the core of all images made. To tell a story and preserve that story for generations to come. We photographers do that today just as people in all ages have done.

If you take some time and look at the online environment you will find people’s photographs all over the place. You do not really even need to look very far or very hard to find them. When you do, they almost always portray a story of some kind.

Let us allow for a distinction where it seems most appropriate. These images you find that tell a story are not all masterpieces made by photographic masters. For the most part they reside far from it, but then an ancient carving on a wall would not rate as a masterpiece from most critics point of view. So, let us set the concept of mastery aside for a moment and consider the value of any image made at its core.

At the core of every image is the image maker’s desire. This must be at the core or there would be no image to make. The desires of the maker determines the outcome of the image. At least it does from the view of just telling a story. It is simple deduction.

These desires can equate to a simple snap shot of friends having a good time, a new puppy, or some event in a person’s life. It can also equate to a beautiful professionally captured landscape, professional portraits, or photo-journalism on a Time Magazine level. The point is that from one end of the spectrum to the other a story is captured in image for posterity and the image maker’s desire to convey what they see is fulfilled.

Like image makers throughout the ages, we today make moments in our lives timeless by applying light to sensor. Some of us do this for purely personal reasons, so that memories can be relived at some time in the future. Others do so for the purpose of benefiting the world with stories of happiness, togetherness, turmoil, trial, and error. No matter the case, we who take camera in hand seek to tell a story that will make a difference for us and those to come after us.

Do not let anyone ever discourage you from telling the story that you want to tell. It is your eye that perceives your world, so let your eye be that which conveys image to camera. Remember that no matter how local or global the image you make, it matters to you. Let nothing stand in the way of persevering for posterity the things you see and care about. Who knows maybe one day your image is found and a history lost is rediscovered. It could happen…

Until next time…

CbyM