Kicking off a Retrospective

by Skip Cohen

​It's Sunday, and as usual, I rarely write about business. I almost always head in a direction that's more personal.  On my last day before what people think of as a milestone birthday, I'm feeling outrageously reflective. Tomorrow makes me officially an "old fart" as I hit seventy-five. I'm struggling a little because, with the exception of creaking for ten minutes when I get up in the morning, I don't feel any different. And according to Sheila, I'm no more mature...LOL.

So, I'm sitting here in the midst of a retrospective. Google defines retrospective as:

Retrospective means looking back. An art exhibit that cover an artist's entire career is called a retrospective because it looks back at the work the artist has produced over many years. Retro- means back, -spect- means look (think: spectacles), so the word means literally 'a looking back.

Photography has existed as some part of me for my entire life, and today's post is about how it got started and one aspect that's never slowed down - capturing memories.

My love for photography started with my Dad, who had a small contact printer he had brought home from WWII - just a box with a light bulb, but we'd process prints in the laundry room. Later, he became the Slide King, as every special moment was captured on 35mm slides, later presented in an endless stream of presentations, always including jammed slides.  But that's when the fire was lit, and it was enough to get me interested in joining the "Photo Service Club" in high school. That's me, bottom left, back in the days when ears seemed to be a qualifier to being a nerd!

​The fire that Dad lit a few years later resulted in an entire wall of my room covered in memories. Everything that happened through high school was captured in black and white, printed in the school darkroom, and later tacked to my wall. Because I was never patient enough to follow procedure, I had the biggest collection of under-fixed yellowing prints on the planet. But that never changed the value of the memories.

As I look both back, as well as forward to what's yet to come, it's all about stopping time. While I have complete respect and admiration for those of you with the skill set technically - for me, it's about capturing the memory with each click of the shutter - not always the quality of the finished photograph.

This is what I like about photographs.
​They're proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect. 

Author Jodi Picoult's quote became my mantra. Again and again, I've succeeded in stopping time and capturing a memory to be stored for savoring in the future. I've used her quote so many times that I've even tried to get her as a guest on a podcast. It's the best quote about photography that I've ever read.

So, here's my point: never slow down your passion for creating and capturing memories. Those photographs from today will become a staple in your future.  And no matter how things change in your life, photography helps to keep your memories vivid.

Wishing everybody a memory-making day ahead and if you're in the US, a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. Take the time to click the shutter a few times; it doesn't matter if it's on your phone or with a "real" camera. Your skill set is critical for your clients, but it's about being the best photojournalist you can be for yourself and your family. Technology has given us all an incredible gift - whether shooting still images or video, no memory-making moment should escape!

Happy Sunday...or Monday if you're on the other side of the world.