A moment in time....

A fleeting glimpse of a Yellow-Breasted Chat, the split second before a red-tailed hawk sinks it talons into its prey, 1/18th of second that for one means life or death, for the other means food or hunger. An old woman's time weathered, wrinkled hands cradling a baby bird that had fallen from its nest, or the smile on a child's face when they discover something new...
The hundredth second where lightning splits the air and washes the night in brilliant blue/white light, or the zenith of color painting clouds floating lazily in the evening sky from the setting sun casting hues of fire across the atmosphere. Things that will never, ever happen again, no matter how long you look you will never find the same thing again.
It all starts on a little star floating through space, and the light that bathes our planet, and provides the energy from all life 93 million miles away, we can sense it, we can feel it when it warms us, but we can not grab it, we can not out run it, we can hardly define what light it. It is particles, it is energy, it is waves.
But we can capture it. We can capture the life it creates, the energy it makes. We can capture the death it causes, we can capture its effects it has when the winds generated from light blows an autumn leaf across the sky. An infinite number of photons, all with different wave lengths and energies bounces off of, and passes through, or is absorbed by everything we see, and most of which we can not see. From Radio waves to Gamma rays, these photons surround us day and night, but I digress before I have to break out the physics equations like E=hf, which I admit I barely grasp! The speed limit of the universe is thought to be 186,000 miles per second, the speed of light. It is measured in time and distance, and we have the ability to stop both, at our will, and capture it all for as long as we choose to keep it.
The word photography comes from two Greek words that mean "writing with light." And photography is the poetry of three things: light, time and subject. Again, which will never be repeated on scientific level. This poetry can invoke fear, rage, sadness, joy, and love. And each persons perspective is different, what may make one person happy when they see a picture may enrage another.
So what is the difference between a photographer and someone who just takes pictures? Is it the equipment? Compared to my daughters pocket point and shoot camera, does my Digital SLR make me a photographer? Compared to the multi-thousand dollar digital SLR camera body a photo-journalist uses, does that make me a mere picture taker, and not a photographer?
Or perhaps it is in education and training. Is a person with a degree in visual arts more of a photographer than a person who has learned on their own and has an amazing ability to capture the perfect timing, light and subject just by their raw perception of what others find pleasing to the eye?
*"Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter. " ~Ansel Adams

*"No photographer is as good as the simplest camera." ~Edward Steichen

*"I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help." ~Ruth Bernhard

When photography is looked at in this perspective, we are all artists in our own rights. We can express our thoughts, our fears, our hopes and dreams in a medium that any person anywhere can comprehend. It shatters all barriers of language, and speaks to everyone, and each person gets a different message.
The ability to capture a moment in time is gift we should all enjoy. One of my favorite quotes about photography: "If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera." ~Lewis Hine