Picture © Daniel Hanna 2013

“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”  -Aaron Siskind

About a year ago, I was on Facebook when I saw that a friend of several of my friends passed away.  He was a young adult.  So many of my friends were posting memories of him that I decided to go to his profile.  I saw many pictures of him with my friends.  I came across one that left an impression on me.  He was smiling at the camera, confident and content.  I wondered about the ideas, goals, and dreams he must have had that had been cut short due to his untimely death.  Further, I thought about his family who had lost a son and brother, and they would never see that smile in real life again, but they would in these pictures.  And I thought about his friends who would no longer be able to spend time with him.  This picture made me think about the power of photography and what it used to be.

With the digital age, unlike the above tributes that my friends posted of their dear friend, the value of photography changed to become almost valueless.  We all have friends who post several pictures a week on Facebook or Twitter.  Because of the proliferation of pictures and unimportant ones too, photography has all but lost its value.  However, photography has a deep value that a lot of us have forgotten, and some of us will never know.

Treasuring Moments

In the past, taking pictures was a matter of money.  Cameras required film, and the roll of film (between 24-36 frames) cost around $5.00 in addition to another $6.00 to $9.00 to develop that film.  This forced people to think about taking pictures and whether a moment was important enough to treasure or whether it could be passed up.  Today, some people take 24 pictures in an hour for no cost at all.  This is what has led to the devaluation of photography.  In the past, that was simply not feasible.  People learned to value moments better in the age of film photography due to the cost.  Today people will take pictures in front of dirt mounds, trash cans, or bathroom mirrors (and actually post them).  No one using film would have wasted a frame on a shot like that 20 years ago.

Creating Legacy

I remember as a child, I used to go to one of the shelves full of books and binders at my home.  Sometimes, I would find a photo album.  These photos went back as far as 40 years before I was born.  They documented childhood photos of my parents, their young adult years, my extended family, weddings, and even my own childhood years beyond the reach of my own memory.

They helped me build a sense of how people were once young, grew, and ended up where they are today.  It created a visual legacy of my family.  These photo albums also spurred an interest in me of people in the past especially as I came across pictures of relatives I had never met and who had passed on before I was born.  I asked my mother about them, and she would tell me about them.  Hearing their stories made me wonder about the past.  This wonder about the past is one of the reasons I majored in history in college.

In a way, photography was a sort of magic for me, a magic that allowed me to travel back in time to see people and places that I had never known.

The Magic of Photography

Photography has a magic unlike any other art because it captures a moment of real experience.  Back in the days of film photography, we had to wait until a roll of film was developed in order to see the pictures we took.  That wait time created anticipation and value because we took the time to take the roll of film and get it developed, and pay for it too in order see the pictures we had taken.

Now that there is a camera on nearly every digital device whether on phones, watches, computers, or even televisions, I wonder what photography will be in the coming years.  Will it ever regain its value?  Will it be a channel for legacy?  Will it still have its magic?  I believe it can, but we must train ourselves to use digital photography in the same way as film photography.  We have to only take out the camera when we think we will treasure a moment and that this is a moment that cannot be passed up.  We have to create photo albums (yes, real ones, not digital ones) that chronicle our lives and our legacy.  It will be then that we will regain the value and magic of photography.

Are there any pictures you value above others?  What are they of?  Have you taken any of these valuable pictures with your phones?  How often do you take pictures using one of your digital devices?