The age of the photograph speaking for itself has gone. The new age consists of the photographer who able not only to capture a moment in time, but to write or say something compelling about that particular capture. The same rules of photography still apply  today, but what has changed? In a way this is a travesty in its own right. It seems that photography has lost the ability to trigger emotional responses in the viewers around the world, or has it?

When Life magazine began showing people the world outside of their own community with photo's across the country, and then the world, a new world view quickly emerged that w larger than the local community. Over time that feeling has been lost I believe due to the sheer amount of photography that exists today. So, are the photographs we see today less appealing than they were sixty or seventy years ago? I doubt that is the case at all, but rather the world is simply not as big as it once was, and our place in it is simply not as defined.

This new age of photography still speaks as loudly and as clearly as it did many years ago when I first discovered a world outside of my backyard. When I see a photograph I don't really care about the composition or the color. I look at every photo and try to see some kind of emotion. Our photography hasn't hasn't lost the ability to speak for itself, rather, we have lost the ability to see the emotions of others in a photograph.

The next time you look at a photograph try this experiment; Place yourself in the shoes of the person or thing and attempt to see through their eyes, stretch out your feelings and "feel" their fear, joy, amazement, or accomplishment, and take the time to "feel" what it must be like to be there, instead of in a classroom or safe in your home. Try to wear the perspective of the photographer and what it must have been like to be in his or her shoes, recording through the lens, a moment that they were a witness to.