See the World While it’s Still Here

Do you ever think like that when you take pictures? I sometimes do. So much of the world is disappearing for all sorts of reasons: environment, population expansion, death, taxes and the passage of time, among others. It’s lucky we can capture things (on cameras) while they are still here, fresh and real. It’s a privilege. Really it is.

Think of how much our ancestors have seen and wished they could save or remember for others to see. People wrote books and drew pictures but it’s only recently (when you consider all the thousands of years) that people have been able to take a photograph and preserve what we see exactly as we see it. Yes, the pictures aren’t perfectly exact but they are near enough to exact that our Grandchildren will be able to see frogs even if they have become extinct by then.

We can show the house we grew up in even if a highway has long since overgrown it. So many other things. I mostly think of nature though. So much of it is already lost. So much more is likely to be lost. When did you last see a garter snake, a frog, a snail? They are much rarer than they were when I was a kid, not hugely long ago.

Take your pictures while ye may.

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