There is no now. There never was.

Look up and see the sun. Realize that that’s how it looked 8 minutes ago. In fact, the sun could disappear completely and we here on earth wouldn’t realize until those 8 minutes were past.

So there is no now. Not in the strictest sense of time. Everything we see takes time for light to be reflected to then reach our eyes and be processed by our brains into an image we understand.

 

Sure, this all takes milliseconds. But then what is a millisecond except another measurement of time?

Now look again at a photograph. Understand the skill of a documentary photographer or photojournalist who interprets actions before they happen and then captures the past from their personal perspective, their ‘now’.

  

They predict an event and make a photograph in an instant, just past. We are all time travelers, living behind the clock and photographers never capture the now, only whats already happened. The true skill of a great documentary photographer lies in seeing into the future…