Capturing Reality

Take a deep breath, close your eyes, clear your mind and imagine walking through the beautiful cobblestone streets of a city; the same streets that generations upon generations have been walking on for hundreds of years. You look around and all you see is beauty, wonderful architecture, mesmerizing nature, incredible details, people going about their day uninterrupted.

You realize that you’ve stopped walking and you are just standing there, in the middle of the street, surrounded by all this, looking at it as if you are not there, as if you are a spectator attentively watching a scene from a movie. As you’re there, lost in your own thoughts, admiring the beauty of everyday life, you realize that the bustle of the city, that unintelligible mix of different undistinguishable noises, forms a mysteriously perfect soundtrack for the movie-like moment you are experiencing. You are so absorbed by everything that is around you, trying to take it all in – like you could only admire it once, right now, in this moment – like this opportunity will never return. 

You remember that in your hand you have your camera. You raise it up, align it with your sight, look through the viewfinder, you take a moment to take it all in one more time, frame it all, and then you click the shutter button. That seemingly uneventful moment is now frozen in time and it will live with you forever. It’s true, only you will know how it truly felt to be right there and then, and what that moment meant for you. Its intensity will never be understood by those who will see that one image, but it doesn’t matter. You are grateful for having experienced it and having the privilege of remembering it every time you will look at that image, reflecting back on what for you was a candidly picture-perfect moment…  Every time I walk through the beautiful streets of the city, searching for such a moment, longing for that exhilarating feeling of replicating that glorious moment just one more time…