ISLAND LIFE
in search of an informed impression.
122
I must say, there is certainly virtue in taking life at a slower pace. So much beauty is lost to everyday haste, and for what? This is why I shoot film. All arguments on technical quality aside, film cameras are best for deliberative shooting because they simply get out of the way and let you create an image. When you’re not worrying about the camera, you’re thinking about the subject at hand, and then something magical happens. The photographer begins to notice a certain, almost transcendental, connection with the scene before him or her; contemplating what these places have seen throughout the years,
and what will come. The photograph becomes a particularly poignant moment in time between the past and the future which will exist forever simply because someone chose to acknowledge it. This is the other kind of “decisive moment” which does not particularly depend on split-second timing. All capacity for image-manipulation aside, I feel that an image created in this state of mind lives on not to become a relic of its time, but rather a testament to existence. Nothing is truer than the fact that these places existed before my time, that I have experienced them, and that one day in the future, they will change. We are forever in a transitional period, and we are not helpless. We must simply acknowledge.