I saw a feed on Facebook recently, posted by a friend, which asked her followers where they were or what they were doing when they received the news that President Kennedy had been assassinated.  The question obviously dated her and those who responded, but it got me thinking about those significant events in each generation that pinpoints a certain day, a certain month, a moment when life irrevocably changed for better or worse.  This not only happens in epochs and eras, it happens in personal ways too.   Some of them are captured in a picture- your first car, blowing out birthday candles at a party, your date for the Prom, time spent with at a favorite place or with a best friend; each of these moments take hold in your life story and define who you are in a deep and enduring way.  They are benchmarks on the timeline of your life and each moment is captured forever in your memory thanks to the picture in your hand.
 
          Photographers are moment stealers.  Whether on film or in a digital file with the press of a button they freeze a moment and make it theirs in a picture.  The thoughtful photographer will do this with uttermost care.  They recognize the moment they are capturing is precious even if it is something as simple as feeding a flock of greedy seagulls on a blustery winter’s day.  The “Happy Snapper” shoots haphazardly, wondering if they’ll get “anything good”.  But for those who treasure the ability to preserve for posterity a moment that was significant to someone, capturing the moment becomes a visual trophy of success.  It is something that is gained by “being at the right place, at the right time”, studying and calculating the light to get the perfect shot, or by waiting patiently to see the moment unfold.
 
          Life has a way of causing us to forget how precious moments are until someone asks the question, “Where were you when…”, or we are riffling through a pile of papers and we stumble on a long forgotten photo which causes us to pause and think about “the moment”.  Should “capturing the moment” only pertain to putting it on film or in a digital file?  I’m starting to think that every moment is special, even if I don’t have a camera in my hands.  But for the times when I do capture “that moment”, moments have become even more treasured because they are now preserved forever thanks to the connection of my finger to the shutter.

Ann H. LeFevre
https://www.annhlefevre.com; [email protected]; https://www.linkedin.com/in/annhlefevre; https://www.facebook.com/ann.h.lefevre

     
I remember in my grade-school years being fascinated by the stories of the great explorers.  I tried to imagine what it would have been like to sail across an uncharted ocean, to venture into an undocumented land not knowing what kind of plants, animals or even people one might find there.  The stories of the trappers who figured out the veins of rivers in North America or sailors who figured out the currents of the seven seas and used them to delve deeper into these mysterious places enthralled me.  Why was I so fascinated by these daring figures?  I think it was because I was a particularly timid child who preferred to take an adventure in a book rather than climb a tree.  But I did have my moments such as when I explored the attic of my grandmother’s house, stomach all a-flutter while climbing those dimly lit stairs to discover long-forgotten boxes and furniture covered in years of dust.  What a find!

The list of explorers is endless: Daniel Boone, Christopher Columbus, Roald Amundsen (South Pole), Robert Peary (North Pole), Henry Hudson, Francis Drake, Neil Armstrong, Coronado, Ponce de Leon, Ferdinand Magellan, James Cook, Marco Polo, and more.   And this list doesn’t include the arts and sciences!  There is something inside of humankind that drives us to want to know more; to see something that no one else has seen before, to go to a place where no one has been before, express ourselves in a new and unique way, or discover what makes something “tick”.  That drive or passion documented the movement of the sun, moon and stars and brought about the first step on the moon, sent probes into the farthest reaches of space, developed ways in which one could reach the depths of the ocean, see the inner workings of cells, make a permanent image on a slip of paper and create music with wood and wire.

Photographers are explorers of the visual kind.  At the click of a setting or twist of a lens we are able to take off on an adventure.  We walk into new and mysterious worlds with the camera as our sexton and compass in order to discover the nuances of both the magnificent and the minute.  Through our lens leaves become road maps, mushroom gills become white waves of milk, landscapes change from mountains and coastlines to vistas of light and shadow, and portraits reveal the hidden depths in someone’s personality.  There is nothing excluded from our desire to seek and discover something we’ve never seen before or to see something mundane in a new and unusual light thanks to the capabilities of our camera and the lens we put on the front of it.

What compels a photographer to explore the world on film or in the digital realm; to go places others have not or to look at the world from a different angle?  I think it is the same sense of curiosity, adventure and discovery as that of any other explorer.  What’s around the corner?  Who is that?  What’s underneath this?  What’s in there?    Has anyone seen this before?  Each time we pick up the camera it is an invitation to join the great adventurers of the past, to ask the questions they asked, to travel in their creative footsteps and to reveal our discoveries in print or on line.  We may not always think of our camera in terms of a telescope or microscope, but oftentimes they are.  We may not see ourselves playing the role of a Thomas Edison or Pablo Picasso, but many times we are!  Like them we walk into worlds with our curiosity and our camera and the discoveries we make are as endless as the explorers who’ve gone before.
 
Ann H. LeFevre
June 1, 2018