In Dallas, he reached toward his head just as the bullet impacted…as his wife and the world watched; the fireball exploded into and out of the building, as the plane impacted…as the world watched…she ran down the dirt road, stark naked, screaming in terror, as the napalm incinerated the jungle and village behind her…and the world watched; the mountain exploded in a tower of dust, smoke and ash…and the world watched.
In newspapers and magazines, on television and computers, in books and every form of communication, the world watched…and the reason the world watched is because someone Sliced Time.
Slicing Time…taking an object sharper than the sharpest knife, sharper than the thinnest razor, slicing through time, slicing free a millisecond, preserving it for all the world to see for all time; preserving millions of moments in the course of a year; and the name for this amazing process? Photography.
Photography. Slicing Time. I first gained an interest in slicing when I was young…and I watched my father with his camera. It was a camera that he had bought in Japan during The Korean War…the cost? Two cartons of cigarettes. It was one of the most precious things I ever saw…and I had to have one; so I got one, and it sent me on a journey into viewing the world through an eyepiece and lens that has lasted to this day. It has become a form of True North to me.
I took pictures of anything and everything; blurry, out of focus, dumb pictures of bugs and windows and mountains and people…and eventually I realized that some people actually wrote books about photography…how to set the camera, how to focus, how to compose the image, how to hold the camera steady, how to…everything. It got to where I spent more time reading than I spent slicing.
Once I got into it, I got into it big time…I took hundreds of photos, mostly of nature subjects. Later, I became a photographer for the Air Force, and later still, a photographer for the Army. In the 80’s, in Utah, I even became a semi-professional photographer…but with a narrow point of view; I took only nature photos…no people, and if at all possible, no man-made objects in the shot. And, for some reason, I always shot slides rather than prints.
Slicing Time. Take out a picture…and take a good look at it. It could be a photo of your child, your grandchild, a brook, a mountain, a butterfly, a bird. It could be a barn or your mom or your spouse. Realize that you are holding in your hand a slice of time, a piece of history, a part of the past. A precious slice of time that will never, ever be repeated in the same way again. It is, in fact, a one of a kind item that no one else can have (unless you give them a copy). It is a slice of time…a slice of life.
I have been slicing time for a large number of years now…and I hope to continue to slice for a very long time. Time slices are used to enhance and help illustrate my writings, inform and educate my family, or they stand alone as monuments on their own. Time slicing has become almost as big a passion to me as writing…which is saying a lot.
Slicing time…everybody’s doing it, but few people realize what they are preserving…a slice of time.
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