Mine and Mine Alone

Mine and Mine Alone

Experience is a funny thing. Once you have one, it cannot be taken away by anyone or anything.

Take, for instance, the image above. I remember the damp morning air enveloping my skin, and the acute sense of awareness that pure observation gives. I remember contemplating the shapes of the dead vines, and attempting to decipher the language in their tendrils.

This is my experience, and no one can share in it. I can share the result, filtered and distilled through the lens of the camera, yet it pales in comparison to the physical, tactile, and dimensional experience I had making the image. Therein lies the challenge in sharing photography, or anything else in the visual arts—everything is a pale facsimile of the original, and yet we share in the hopes that those who view our work might possibly glean just a fraction of the original reason we pushed the shutter button.

Experiencing the world with a camera in hand is an opportunity to share in some small way the experiences we have-and having the camera often allows us to experience things over a longer period of time simply because we have a record of the transient moments through which our lives slip.