New Year's resolution

For me photography is  the art of framing reality and freezing that special moment in time forever.
At the same time you are stooping the universe in that split second you are also trying to preserve it for eternity in some kind of medium. It's a way of never forgetting an idea, a concept or a person; of sharing that special image with the world or with your loved ones.

I believe a lot of memories that people have are still images in their minds, like pictures. And once you see that old picture you took years ago, it all comes back to you...that special moment...that smell..that talk...that crazy day in your life...
It's like you never forget anything...your brain just needs a little help.

I've been practicing photography for a while and when I started a friend told me "So you want to start taking pictures and learn about photography (ironic smile) well  I'll show you the photographer graph"

I answered "I just want to take pretty pictures of my vacations, I'll never be like that"
Well I guess I'm on the "Found an old film camera" phase :) to be accurate, it was more like "I fixed an old camera and stated taking pictures with it" but that's a different story, a different post.
Still have to master composition now and practice till I die :D a long way ahead of learning and disappointment , joy  and wonder...at least I hope so.

So to get to the point, my new year's resolution for photography is to do more photography on people.
I've had a hard time capturing that photographic essence in humanity itself. I have some wonderful portraits of friends and family but it's easy because I know these people so well it's easy for me to capture their essence in a single frame. For me it's hard to do it for those I do not know, either because I'm afraid people will react in a bad way when I take their picture or because I feel that they wouldn't like to be portrayed in that specific way I'm envisioning.

When I started to think about this I though to myself "I'll start with portraits...that's it...a self portrait" so I wondered how I would portrait myself and how people would see me and if I would like to see my own picture made public and started having second thoughts and doubts. That's when I realized I was stuck on a loop...my fears and doubts about taking pictures of strangers where the same for my own picture.

That's humanity...your fears, your thoughts  you doubts and your beliefs, the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad, you perfections and imperfections.
When you're looking at humanity you are looking back at yourself, like in a mirror...or a picture!