Sunday, April 3, 2011

Confessions of a Sleep-Deprived Photographer

markvelasquez,nsfw,nsfwmagazine
(This was written in the pages of Zink Magazine somewhere over the Midwest around 2 a.m. on a red-eye from NYC to LA in February 2010.)

I have these moments, as maybe all photographers do, when I am unfortunately without my chosen creative tool, my camera. Be it an unusual perspective or a special, candid moment in time, I know that specific instance will never be able to be recreated, as all truly real or great moments in life fail to be, and I am filled with regret that a beautiful thing could not have been preserved and shared.

The truth of the situation is that, even in a perfectly composed and technically proper image recording that moment, more often than not, no two-dimensional picture could ever capture the beauty, spectacle, and exact emotional mood I was in to have made that moment, and the supposed documentation of it for the viewer, as magical as actually living it would have.

I suppose this drive to document, and thus be able to share these special moments of life, has to do with a complicated mix of wanting to show or impress, wanting to not feel alone in the experiencing of something you felt was important. Either way, I feel robbed, and especially since, once I realize I will be unable to capture it because of lacking the proper equipment, I also immediately realize that I will probably forget the specific moment, which tends to always be the case.

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