i am an amateur photographer

hi, my name is kai and it is time i made a confession. i like photography. and i have a camera in my back pocket. i stop and smell the roses then whip out my metal brick to remember the scent i’ll forget, but never that moment. just like you. just like our grandmas. i am a capturer of moments.

occasionally, i travel and find myself perusing antique shops for their mildew-scented, halfway broken dresser, the top drawer, where yellowed photographs of the family of who knows meets the blurred blue-green and terracotta landscapes. “someone was super excited by this deer,” i think to myself also becoming deeply excited by the deer. imagine yourself in their shoes. or boots. carrying your bag on your back and wind up disposable that you just bought for the trip, you tip toe through the trees. you rustle bushes and you mock birds. a twig snaps to your left. locked in now your eyes are to theirs. gasp! snap! “gotcha!” she runs away having been equally shocked by your sight, and perhaps your flash, however you now have a photo you will not be able to see until the next week. ten, twenty, forty years pass and someone who wasn’t there holds your memory. you captured a moment i captured for two US dollars.

evidence

the art of analog photography is not dead but the digital rise carries the same spirit. all we want when do this, when we take pictures , is to survive. we want to live longer. we want to remember the moments and we want proof that these moments happened so that when we show our loved ones and struggle to tell the tale through chuckles or chokes, the picture is the helping hand.

but these moments don’t last forever and the moment was gone before the picture was taken. we’re not photographing the realizations, the onsets, the surprise! it’s the moment after. but those two moments still encapsulate the whole of the experience we didn’t want to end, or touch, or leave in its novelty, awe, and beauty. a picture says, hey, i was here. really here. mentally, spiritually, and physically. and i’ve been a lot of places says my overstocked camera roll ever-threatening the storage in my pocket microwave. and so were you. i think about the moments you save for later and wonder if my non-existing child, their friends, their great-grandkids will find them in an antique store from today’s world. i want them to.

the lighting was beautiful with a lush blue cascading the background, luminous. shadows helped the sun form shapes on the side of the building. this, that, and those all sat kissed and blushing in my camera from being seen and now forever immortalized is a moment from a day i don’t remember. all i know is that i was walking. crossing the street before the sign says to stand in the perfect spot where the crispness of the setting sun should be best ingested. the work we do for a beautiful picture. i can immediately see the photo. a deep breath soothes my excitement until i think about it again. a once ever moment.

or perhaps the pictures of our grandparents holding us and our cousins and not a single person being with you in the room now. maybe not a phone call away but a world. i would never know what i looked like at 3 years old with this. my dad stands proud too. the flower is in bloom, or it was in June two years ago at least. what if there are no roses in three generations? google has a reference but i hold an image of a bright red one a now deceased stranger managed. the power in that is amazing. time in your hand. but what is time anyway?

the picture says you lived, that tree existed, there was life here, people loved there, the sun shone, the rocks withered but hold to an unchanging glance from 1942. it says you cooked, they ate, we sang happy birthday and danced and drank a discontinued soft drink we bought on ebay from Edgar’s basement stock.

pictures make me sentimental, or they are a catalyst for how i engage with the human experience of life, death, and dying. but one way or another, we are all undying. keep taking the bricks out for a click.