Walking about with my camera is satisfying.  In my high school days I discovered the challenge of angle-of-view, light, and the framing of a camera lens, are elements of an art form that continues to fascinate.  My first lesson in capturing a photo took place at a drag strip, with my father’s box camera in my hand.  The shutter speed was 1/30th of a second, which is sufficient for capturing a black and white photo of a smiling family standing obediently for a group photo.  For my purpose, capturing a super stock race car “wheels up” launching from the starting line, the shutter speed was, to say the least, slow.  I learned techniques that helped overcome the camera’s shutter-speed limitation.  Later in the darkroom at school I’d print out 8×10 black and white enlargements of the images which I’d captured. 

A photograph helps to fix in memory a sliver of time, a time when the photographer was present “to capture” a ephemeral, passing moment.  Memories fade, become unreliable.  The image on screen or fixed by inkjet onto paper, is an artifact, a memorial to what is passing, or already has passed away.  A photographer is a time bandit. 

Roman emperors memorialized their acts by erecting statues, stone pillars, or temples — we have photographs. 

I still have my father’s Kodak box camera.

It is midsummer.  I particularly enjoy taking photos of blooming flowers.  The forms and colors are ineffable.  A flower’s purpose, among others of course – is to be looked at.  They are metaphor’s of a certain type.  If there is a question of what is meant by the term “red”….  Just look!