Diving in head first with only thinking happy thoughts became my muse. Before I knew it I was finished with the first page. Wow! That wasn't so bad, I told myself. Basically, it seemed to give me a better understanding of photography. As a photographer our eye allows us to see the world in ways we have never seen it before. The photographer is no longer confined to the cave, or our world as said in the article. Since the development of photography has been established, we can now literally hold the world in our hands. We can photograph everything, everyone, everywhere and then compile it; thus we can "collect the world" (3).
Being able to "collect the world" (3) in a physical sense even if it is on paper, is amazing because each one of these photo's, represent many different things, places, people and the photo has been taken from different photographer's eyes, as well behind the lens, creating the shots. This is the beautiful thing about photography, everyone has his or her own style, likes and dislikes; and as the photographer, they control their scene and they are able to dictate from hiding behind the camera.
Photographs can be timeless. Its interesting how time doesn't stop, or go backwards, all it does is continue to progress forward but yet a photo does show the past. People can look back at their family history. They trace their lost relatives, maybe even those their parents talked about but they never met. Then while looking at the photo, they can make up their own story about the relative. Over the years photographs have made huge progressions in helping people with more than just recalling family history, in 1871 photographs became a tool used as surveillance. Photo's were even taken at crime scenes; they became physical proof of events that had taken place. It perks my interest to the difficult process those men must have gone through in the beginning to process the prints, where now our crime scene investigators and other law enforcement agencies use digital cameras, making documentation a whole lot easier. It makes me wonder how much time and effort had to go into the process just to solve a case.
Throughout the years, photography has made many advancements, some good others bad. Photography is thought to be as popular "as sex and dancing" (8). Maybe this isn't such as bad thing, unless we buckle down and start talking morals and such. But what about parents who purposefully don't photograph their young children, this supposedly "is a sign of parental indifference" (8) causing children as they grow older miss school picture days. If that isn't bad enough, what about these sickos who are into pornography? This started from photography. It is one thing for someone to have impure thoughts or fantasies, not saying it is morally right, but we have made it easier for people because now they can look at photographs or movies even of their pornography of choice, whatever it may be. Let us recall the movie Peeping Tom referred to in the article about the psychopath who kills woman with his camera as he photographs them, without touching them (13). This is insane.
I think photography is very powerful. This can be good and it can be bad as said before it can be used as a sinful act. Of course the good things in photography are much more important to discuss. I have to end on positive note. Think positive, think positive, thinking positive. Photo's allow us to keep memories alive, no matter how old they are. They become a book in a sense. I know that some of my own family pictures fire some memory from way back when. Just looking at a photo I get a small glimpse of my past. "...photographs fill in blanks in our mental pictures of the present and the past" (23) and its wonderful to have those kinds of memories. Let the wonderful, positive memories live on and the negative horrible attributes of photography die.
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