Story of the Photo: Time

The time a photographer waits for a shot is rarely conveyed to the viewer. They may acknowledge a good photo for a few moments and then move on, hopefully taking a shimmer of joy or ounce of self-reflection as they go.

Although some photos are serendipitously captured in a brief, lucky moment, so many more take hours or days of preparation and forethought.

For example, as noted in a previous post, I prepared weeks before shooting a solar eclipse. An adorable photo of a squirrel clinging to a tree took 20 minutes of waiting for the perfect moment. I probably took a dozen photos of which only one was the clear, expressive winner. Long exposures, by definition, need time to capture movement of light in creative ways. Seconds to minutes to hours.

The mechanics of taking a photo are simple, especially when most of us carry a camera in our pocket at all times. But let’s not discount the artistry of the medium or hand it over to computer generated approximations.

Let’s continue to make beautiful things with our time. It’s the most precious, fleeting resource we have.