10 May 2014

For the love of pictures

I have an inexplicable love for making pictures. It's been something that I loved for a long time, and I never really questioned it. I've thought long and hard about why that might be, but I struggled putting it into words. You see, I am a person of many feelings and emotions and not quite as many words to express them, even though this post might become many words trying to express what my passion for photography is... what it means, and why. When it comes to emotion, I often find that music and art conveys it best, sometimes on its own, sometimes combined. Photography is one of the artistic mediums that does so best, for me. I love making memories, and capturing them. Memories are like little treasures that fills your life with riches you can't compare with anything material, but our minds are fallible and we forget. Making pictures changes that. 




My parent's have this little old suitcase they put all the old photographs in and I remember how awesome it felt to open it and dig through them - some are black and white pictures from my grandparents and others have the authentic vintage look (the real deal, classic 70s and 80s photography). My dad owned a film camera those days, a Mamiya that now no longer works and became part of my slow growing camera collection. It's the Mamiya that I'm holding in these pictures. He had quite the eye for it, I think - his pictures were great. I'm willing to bet that the original seed for my passion was probably planted here, with the looking at moments from the past that stirred a deep nostalgia in me. I deeply cherish the people I love and the times we spend together and I wish to make pictures of them and of these moments, so that one day when I'm old and gray (well probably a lot sooner than that) I can look back to remember. To feel that day again, to laugh, to love and maybe shed a tear or two.


This is why I love photography. I love making and capturing memories, and I always strive to learn how to do so more beautifully. It's a steep learning curve, but the technical side of it becomes second nature with practice. I love everything about photography, practically every genre of it. I love landscape photography, animal, portraiture, spontaneous, street, wedding, fashion, fine art photography... the list goes on. People love to think you should pursue only one direction in life - that you should specialize in something. Well, whoever came up with the saying "jack of all trades, master of none" probably didn't know what a happy guy jack was. Variety and change makes life interesting and exciting! Exploring the different areas in photography gives me great joy. I love taking a picture of the perfection of a rose, or the waves breaking onto a reef, or a baby's tiny little hands. To see a scenario play itself out on the street, to witness the beauty and to capture it and share it with the world. To see beauty in a person when they never imagined it was there, to capture it and show it to them. This is what makes me happy.


Please do not reproduce, copy or use any of the images in any way without my written permission. Copyright © 2014 Anneli Strecker. All Rights Reserved.

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