The Past

📍Summer 2024

By the time I got down on one knee in front of my NASA co-interns, their laughter filling the air as they pointed up at two tall green signs, my finger was already hovering over the shutter button of my camera. I grinned at the moment I would get to preserve.

The viewfinder presented a genuine image: friends pairing up to take photos of each other, interns hyping each other up, and all of us still buzzing at the sites we had gotten to see so far. This was a quick, but funny stop on our tour of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Nestled between a controlled access area and a patch of tall grasses were two signs. The sign on the left read, “International Space Station ↖️ On-Ramp.” The sign on the right read, “Moon Ahead ⬆️.” It was the perfect photo spot.

As soon as we hopped off the bus, I made sure my settings were ready to go. I was working alongside my co-intern to capture the tour for NASA Goddard's social media accounts, and even before that moment occurred, I had already framed that photo in my mind. I stopped between the two signs, looked through the viewfinder, and moved around to ensure no one would appear to have a signpost rising from their heads. I let two people with their backs to me frame the outer edges of the shot, then I pressed the shutter button.

That summer day fulfilled some of my lifelong bucket list items, like seeing the inside of a range control center and visiting a scientific balloon research facility. But it was also the day I realized something: As much as I tried to live in the moment, I loved the planning stage before every photo and never quite succeeded in turning off the part of my mind that always strived for “the perfect shot.”

After The Past

📍Flash to the Present

There’s a certain beauty that only my Sony A6000 can capture – the beauty of perfection. Each photo, perfectly composed. The aperture, turned down to create a bokeh effect. The ISO, turned down to reduce graininess. The shutter speed, turned up to freeze a fleeting moment in time. The process behind creating each photo involves carefully checking its technical specifications before taking it, yet also adapting to the chaos of life in order to predict it and capture it just in time. It’s a moment of pre-editing.

Yet, so much comes after it. Exporting the photos to Adobe Lightroom Classic. Correcting the white balance, setting the exposure. Raising the shadows, lowering the highlights. Editing is almost like art. Photo after photo, raw data turns into pure beauty as the once-bland moment in time evolves from perfect framing to perfect coloring, a moment as vivid as the one in which it was captured.

It’s a time-consuming process – two hundred photos to import, two hundred minutes to edit, two hundred photos to export and organize. Two hundred pieces of art, each made perfect. Freezing a moment in time that, perhaps, was not meant to be frozen.

The Past

📍2022 - 2024

My camera used to rest in my backpack, always ready with a long 28-75mm lens or even a short 16-50mm lens attached. If I saw a rabbit resting cutely in a patch of grass on my walk back from Fisk to my dorm, I would take out my camera to snap a photo. If I saw a gaggle of geese walking across the snow by the Lakefill, I would trace the lines of their footsteps, framing them in the foreground. If I was invited to a theatre preview, a student film premiere, a company event, or a reporting opportunity, my camera would be there, a constant presence at my hip or in my hands. Whether I was photographing meteorite samples, government officials, flight facilities, or my best friends, my camera was there, ready to capture that moment. The shimmer of light on sparkling glasses. The friends striking a pose on a red carpet. The actor’s smile toward her love interest. The sandwiches assembled on a picnic blanket at dusk.

Life is beautiful because it’s real. The small moments are the ones that are the most meaningful, and sometimes, I delight in the fact that I can preserve them with my camera, capturing a moment in time before it flits away.  

It’s been years since I first picked up my camera. It was a constant presence in my life, always by my side when I needed it. Always there – until now.

The Present

📍Fall 2024

I spent last Saturday at a museum.

Tourists wandered through the rooms of the Teatro-Museo Dalí in Figueres, Spain, the murmur of different languages blending with the whisper of footsteps across polished floors. I walked into a dark room illuminated solely by lights placed around the centerpiece, only to be greeted by a sudden, blinding flash – the flash of a Sony camera. I squinted in annoyance. Perhaps he didn’t know how to lower the shutter speed, to raise the ISO, to do any of the things that should have completely sufficed to capture the artwork without activating his flash.

Just like that, my thoughts whirled with technical specifications. How he could have shifted slightly to the left to center the artwork in his frame. How he could have adjusted his settings to eliminate the flash.

But perhaps none of that mattered. Perhaps he simply wanted to capture the moment, one where perfect framing and perfect composition were irrelevant. Perhaps he simply wanted to do what photography was supposed to do all along – capture life as it was.

In that instant, I realized I didn’t wish that I had my camera with me. What I had was enough. I didn’t need a perfect photo. A few minutes after the man left, I stood in the same spot. I lifted my phone, aimed it at the artwork, and snapped a single picture. Then I looked at the artwork, without the barrier of anything between it and me.

It was a moment suspended in time, a moment that illuminated the beauty of life.