Any time, any place

Time waits for nobody, or anything for that matter. Without it we’d have no universe and vice versa. We are moving steadily through the vastness of space at 1.3 million mph. Reach a pacey 186,000 mi/sec – and time will stop for the traveler. For a photon of light it has only ever known its destination. Time is a funny old thing, a byproduct of the Universe exploding into to life. We see it as a ticking clock, ruling our days. I used to feel bad for sleeping in; thinking it was a waste – having a 3 year old I wish those long slumbers back. If we valued time the same way we do coin then I think we’d be far more productive.

I have seized the light.

I have arrested its flight.

Louis Daguerre, 1839

I’m fascinated by time in all its forms. We can look back on our memories thanks to photography; we can see how certain times were. The word ‘photography’ is essentially Greek for light drawing – and there is something magical about that. It also tells us that capturing images has been around for some time. It wasn’t until the mid 1800’s that images as we know them arrived. The principal elements though, don’t change.

Albeit still a story can be told, making a photo truly timeless. In my opinion we have already invented time machines, they’re called cameras. We can freeze our moments in time and revisit them in years to come. Our hard-drives now time capsules, pick a date and sift through the past. I’m always left bewildered when I see old photos, when people had no clue what was happening, what they’d created. It’s the same amazement you see in the eyes of children from the impoverished areas of the world, when they see their image on the back of the camera. A delight and wonder in their souls bringing back a sense of childlike fantasy to my own thoughts.

I can’t remember when I first saw an image of myself, and I often wonder how much is memory or just ones I’ve made having seen a photo in an old album. I don’t even recall any particular member of the family having a camera. That cheese moment doesn’t exist in my mind – yet there are pictures, many albums full of my past. It’s sad I cannot remember, or then understand the importance of having a picture took. It makes me wonder if my son will remember the endless pictures I take of him. We have few albums too, being as this digital age has taken something from us. I must print more out and display them, our moments in time.

There is something to be said for that strange nostalgic sensation. Old photos of myself always tickle me; the changes in fashion and the incredible rate our technology expands; the time before mobile gadgets or even the Internet. Go back only 150 years, and the world was a very different place, a place where photographic images were new, a wonder and something of a marvel. Think of the idea to take ones image and place it upon a sheet of metal; the realm of science fiction. Today, it’s thought that roughly 3.8 trillion pictures have been taken during the course of humanity… that’s a lot of memories. In my short three years of shooting, I’ve racked up over 70k – of course not all keepers, but each one a slice of time.

Roar!

If I could take a step back in time and had a choice of destination to take my camera, where would I go? Human history is brief in the grand scheme of things, and although there are events I’d certainly like to witness, say the construction of the pyramids, or to see the contents of Alexander’s library – I am drawn further back though, to a time when beasts once roamed the Earth. We have nothing today that could compare to what sight the dinosaurs must have been like. Creatures of fantasy dreamt up in a child’s mind, but instead a reality – a vivid monster of evolution. Without a doubt, that’s where you’d find me.

I’m only thirty-four, yet so much has changed – I ponder, what of the next thirty? So what then of places we have yet to go, a time not yet set in stone – if you could, would you peek through the looking glass?

What of the future? What will cameras be like twenty years from know? Twenty-five years ago they were not digital, and relied on a lot more skill. That’s not to say modern advances have made life easier, but certainly it is more accessible. So in the future personal devices will have state of the art cameras built in, that’s a given (they pretty much already do) – but what about glasses? Is it possible we might be able to take images of what we see though our very eyes, rather than a camera? Moving forward in time, is it possible to take memories and print them? I think so. Our minds will become the CTV and simply download a memory and replay it. Picking the best scene – maybe they’ll be interactive images, and not only view it in 2D, but in 3D… MIND BLOWN!

Aiden took his new camera out of the box and studied his upgrade with a keen eye; the same keen eye that had captured thousands of images. The matte black camera was just like most, apart from one additional dial on the right side. ‘Hmm.’ He thought, ‘What is that?’ – he rolled his thumb over it and watched the digits change on the small LCD screen. It seemed to be the time, ‘odd.’ What a strange place for that. He ignored it and fired off a test shot. A green light flickered on the back as the images buffered before it popped up, filling the screen.

What he saw caused every hair on his arms to spike. There on the screen was a body lying face down in a pool of blood – his body!

Lee Kulik – Exposed – A short story

Time is a lot of things to different people. It can heal, it can hinder, it can seem to last forever and if you’re like me, then your shower is a time machine. Time is the one thing that if you waste it, you really don’t get it back. When talking photographically it’s essential not to waste a fraction of a second. Time of day can be crucial, timing of the subject essential, shutter speed vital – time is a huge ingredient in getting things spot on.

“Life is enslaved to the passage of time – Except for this moment which is free”

The movie In-Time starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, really puts it in our faces. Having time as a commodity certainly changes perspective. If we could see our own biological clock, slowly dripping away we’d have to be more spontaneous, more adventurous – surely we’d value every second as though it were a million pounds…. So why don’t we? Instead of reading this blog, what else could you have done? How many days… maybe even weeks, god knows how long have we wasted? I prefer not to think on it from that perspective, instead I look ahead to the future towards the time that awaits us.

Tomorrow never comes, yesterday is always one step behind us and today, the right now… well it should be really best spent on doing what makes us happy, or at least working towards that. For me, my free time is made up of family time, and when I do get it, me time. As much as I hate being sat at a desk wishing the hours away, they do allow me to provide my family with the essentials in life. A roof, food and day trips etc… as much as we may hate it, our time is a bargaining tool for limited amounts of ‘fun times’. It’s a high price, and I do question what it’s actually worth, not just in coin.

The last thing we want is to be someone’s yesterday. If it’s possible, be their ‘right now’ – and value that rotating dial of undefined possibility.

Right now you could be someone’s tomorrow, but tomorrow may never come… Ask yourself if it’s worth your time?