Wow, heavy, or is it?

Today we were informed by WordPress that we have now reached our second anniversary, where does the time go?

How do you begin to approach questions like ‘What’s it all about’?  Well I suppose every single one of us would give a different answer and more than that, your answer would differ almost daily…

The question always reminds me of a Michael Caine line used in a song by Carter USM and it always makes me smile, not for any other reason than the acceptance that we all pose the question to ourselves at one time or another.  It’s only natural.

So what is this blog all about?  Well I am under no illusion that this gets seen by millions of people, tens of people is something….  This is a tool of my trade, a business tool an opportunity to shout about what we are doing, what our plans and ambitions are, so show some examples of our work, to interest you (well you can’t have it all I suppose), but ultimately a way of connecting.  There is no malice, just what is intended to be an honest approach.  The trouble with the written word is context. The skill in writing is just that, but often over looked is the skill in reading.  Most of us don’t really understand punctuation, me included.  Where should that colon come in, why does the apostrophe go there and how does the comma in a certain place change the meaning of the sentence?  Yes it is fair to say, I am not the best at writing, but I try.  We all communicate with each other, and talking is the best way because quite simply, the voice naturally has the natural inflexions that enhance the words themselves and make the meaning come to life. to give it context, to make it easier to understand.  I think it is far easier to misunderstand the written word than not and possibly the other way around for the spoken word.  That is not to say, the spoken word is never misunderstood because we all know it is.

I guess it makes sense then that unless you are certain the writer of some text is excellent and you have confidence that you read well, you should never take what you read too literally.  Easier said than done!  I know….  The more I write the more I understand just how artistic writing can be.

This leads me onto the next question, what IS the magic of photography?  Well apart from being a tag line for this blog, photography for many has always had that allure of magic.  If you go back to thee old film days (many of us view with a nostalgic tear), the actual process of creating an image onto a piece of glass or gelatin is nothing short of ingenious.  Using the right chemicals at the correct temperature for the exact amount of time to develop the latent image is nothing less than astonishing.  To see an image form on a blank piece of paper in the darkroom will always amaze me, it feels like magic.  Of course I know it is not, it is chemistry but I will never fully understand the process so no matter how much I research it, I like the feeling I get that I am witnessing a little miracle.

Photography has changed in many ways in recent years and like any development, change is never all good, but usually it is also never all bad either.  It is true the chemistry has gone, but the technological change is as dramatic and breath taking as the original process.  How modern digital cameras capture what they do, well there simply has to be an element of magic in there somewhere.

Again though, this is not all there is, the magic goes beyond that.  Surely the magic is in the emotion that a still image can portray?  The capture of a genuine smile, the love displayed in a wedding photograph, the drained exhaustion of a brand new mother holding their baby, the satisfaction of having received your scroll from University, the list goes on and on.  The capture of these things remind us of those moments and allow us to relive them, to remember.  This is the real magic of photography, a simple two dimensional print or image can be so much more than that.  In fact in cases where families have lost all their belongings in a fire often say that the hardest to come to terms with is the loss of their photos.  Makes you think….