Why I take pictures

Most days I go on walks of 4-6 miles in the nearby woods. I bring my camera. I tell people that it gives me something to do with my hands. But it’s more than that.

I learned the basics of photography in high school. I used many of those skills as a postdoc and well into my career as a scientist. Digital photography freed me from the darkroom. 

Through all those decades, my life was dominated by the future and how to control it. Photography was a means to an end. Revisiting photography after retirement has not just taught me new skills, it’s taught me to live in the moment at a time in my life when the amount of “future” I have left is shrinking.

As the professional wildlife photographer Simon d’Entremont says: “Photography doesn’t just change the pictures you make, it changes the person who makes them. Photography is a way of participating in the world instead of consuming it.” In the video link at the end, d’Entrement enumerates six ways that photography is transformative in the world of AI:

1. Photography rewards curiosity in a world the rewards certainty.

2. Photography gets you into the world instead of in front of another screen.

3. Photography teaches patience in the world built around instant gratification.

4. Photography gives you the stories that come with the pictures.

5. Photography teaches you to appreciate rather than consume.

6. Photography rewards effort in a world where so much is effortless.

I’ll never be as good at photography as Simon d’Entremont, but photography is enriching my life and complements the other healthy habits that sustain me in old age.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGkFWLifPlY

 

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