Photographs live long lives.
They linger in our collective subconcious, gather quiet dust in the corner of a drawer or hang - slightly crooked - on a cluttered wall of fame.
In a crowd of moments, carried forward with the flow of time, the good ones make us feel something a little bit profound. Whether joy, sadness or inspiration, they help in our often futile attempts to understand.
The not-so-good ones ripen with time and nostalgia, often serving as the last connections to our fleeting past.
They peel away the layers so we can bear witness to the individual slices; defining moments that serve to create the whole of what we are or the potential of what we can be.
Oftentimes, the rush of combined moments - time's flowing passage - disallows this. We see the rush of life fluidly, swimming in the infinite moments, finally tiring, exhausting itself, then drowning in the very process of living.
But the runaway train of living often forgets life. Forgets that big is made of the small. Grains of sand are as much a part of the beautiful white beach as the beach itself.
Photography serves to remind us that we are still young to this universe. Just a bunch of kids lying on a beach that our parents took us to, forgetting all about swimming in the bigger moments, ignoring everything, just looking at the individual grains of sand. Wondering where the sand had been.
Wondering, ultimately, where that grain of sand was going next.
Like the swirl of colors from the artist's rainbow, a photo holds a point in the journey's ebb and flow. It captures a cog in the bigger wheel, allowing a little precious time to reflect.
Footnotes left from the passing year.
Not all, but a few things that mattered.
A state softball championship. Being there for the home team beating the number-one ranked team in the nation. Catching a glimpse of rising music stars. Seeing the pure joy of a son when his father comes home early from service to his country.
Or, on a note that tests our ability to be better than the things we hate, experiencing the reactions to the end of a man whose name became synonymous with terrorism, death and destruction.
Moments, though, don't always have to carry community, national or international value. Oftentimes they shine because they are a personal triumph - the last second diving save, a defining moment where a play could go either way or simply finding a beautiful place to take a little rest.
The quiet moments.
Just doing the job.
Sometimes, in the frantic blur from the window of the runaway train, the moments get lost.
Photography gives us a frame to pause. A captured instant that defies time's movement and lives long after the instant has gone.
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