Sharing Your Worldview Through Photography
“Photography is a way of feeling, of loving, of touching. What you have captured on film lives forever. It remembers little things long after you have forgotten everything.”
That quote by famed photographer American artist-photographer Aaron Siskind offers a powerful testimonial not just about what photography can offer the public — it also reveals a pathway for individuals to expand their world views through the power of expression.
Expression
Photography is an addictive hobby for millions of people because it provides a vehicle for creative expression and a unique way for human beings to accomplish what we crave on a deeper level. That craving is to communicate our unique worldview with our fellow humans in a profound and meaningful way.
Immortalizing Life
Photography is a way to document your journey through life. The images of a lifetime are captured starting with childhood pictures and on through those taken of the elderly. Stored in a family album — or today in digital files — it is a way to document and crystalize a life. No other method or medium can accomplish quite the same feat.
Expanding Your Being
Consider this comment by photographer Wynn Bullock:
“The camera is not only an extension of the eye … it is an extension of the brain. It can see sharper, farther, nearer, slower, and faster than the eye.”
Bullock added that he thinks of the camera as more than a way to simply “reproduce objects.” His goal was to “make visible to the eye what was invisible” or unnoticed before.
Thus, photography is a tool to expand your being, branch out your consciousness, and an opportunity enhance the fundamental sensory tools that Mother Nature gave us at birth. A camera is a mega-extension of the eye. It sees further, deeper, more intricately, and greater artistic clarity than mere human vision or observation.
Relieving Stress by Getting Outside Yourself
Much of the daily anxiety and mental turmoil we struggle with are creatures of our inner thoughts that arise out of some dark corner of the mind to bully and torment us in big and small ways.
By its very nature, the practice of photography frees us from this self-created and self-imposed prison by thrusting us outside of ourselves to look outward at the world in a fresh way.