I have found no matter how much I try to remember a moment in all its detail – that over time, my memory fades. Whether the feeling releases a well of tears behind our eyes or the tingling elation that surges through our spine, these feelings become harder over time to recreate from memory alone.
A photo is a time capsule for memories, able to convey depth and detail permanently captured, a portal to through time and space.
I took my first serious step towards photography because the over-the-moon anticipation of a 30-day trip I planned to East Africa. The itinerary was simple, summit Mount Kilimanjaro and then explore 1:1 with a guide the Northern Circuit National Parks in Tanzania. Cataloging the moments worthy of a once-in-lifetime adventure inspired me to purchase my first DSLR camera, a Nikon 5100. This adventure was an act of self-care after returning from 4 months in Afghanistan.
Why Kilimanjaro? Every morning for 4 months in Afghanistan, I woke up and walked out of my container home to be greeted by the enormous scale of the Marmal Mountains, a row of jagged pinnacles that stretched to either side of the horizon. At the base were rolling hills that then seemed to explode vertically out of the ground and stood as impenetrable rock wall, capped in pure white snow. While I yearned to explore the mountains, this would not be the time or place. Rather, the fantasy of climbing in the mountains led to adventure of reaching the top of Kilimanjaro.
Seeing the Marmal mountains every morning and reflecting on the many other adventures the Navy has afforded me the previous six years, I realized how these magic moments could feel lost forever without some permanent way to memorialize the moment.
I stumbled upon a quote by Ansel Adams that captures what I love about photography, “A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.”
It is my hope that through these photos, I can immerse you in another time and place to experience a special moment of your own and convey some of the magic I felt in taking the photo.
“I wish that all of nature’s magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.”
— Annie Leibovitz