The photograph never changed. The years simply taught me how to see it.
I almost deleted this photograph.
It seemed ordinary.
The light wasn’t dramatic. The composition wasn’t perfect. I couldn’t even decide what the photograph was really about.
For reasons I still don’t understand, I kept it.
Looking back now, I’m grateful I did.
We had just returned from our holiday in Italy in 2017, and I had started to edit some of the photos.
Earlier today, I had time to spare, so I started scrolling through my old images just to pass the time. I find this an enjoyable activity, as I fondly recall some of the places I have visited and the people I have met.
When I came to this photograph, I stopped and looked at it twice again. I thought it had changed.
Except it hadn’t.
I had changed.
Some things only become beautiful after enough time has passed for us to understand what they meant.
Beauty Is Sometimes a Slow Discovery
When I am living through a moment, I rarely recognise its significance. I am focused on what I am doing and aiming to do it as well as I can. But that is never easy, whether I am alone or with others.
My mind is rarely still. Even while I’m making a photograph, another part of me is already thinking about the next destination, the remaining daylight, or whether I’ve captured what I came to find.
Looking at a photograph on the back of my camera often doesn’t convey the true beauty of what I have captured. And even when I get home and look at it on the larger screen, I can fail to see the beauty in the image.
I have found that only distance allows me to see the quiet gifts that were present all along. My photography repeatedly teaches me that lesson.
An image I have ignored for years can suddenly become one that I treasure.
And yet the pixels never changed.
My perspective did.
Time Is the Final Editor
Some of my photographer friends can spend hours editing an image. They open the image in Photoshop, and it can have 100 layers of work they did to reveal the beauty they saw when they captured the image.
They polish an image the way a jeweller reveals the brilliance hidden inside a stone.
I may spend hours putting together a conceptual composite as I work to embed the components, so they appear natural within the scene to tell the story I planned.
However, life edits differently.
Time removes the noise.
I have found it softens embarrassment.
It fades irritation.
It leaves behind kindness, laughter, courage, and love.
Sometimes there is a need to have a difficult conversation with someone. This may later become the moment our relationship deepens.
Even the mistakes I made can become the beginning of my gaining wisdom.
Time edits experience much as a photographer edits a frame, slowly revealing what truly matters.
Photographs Grow Older Alongside Us
My photographs accumulate meaning slowly. Each one is like a container carrying a moment of emotion that needs time to mature.
A photograph of the kitchen table from my youth becomes the place my father sat and read the newspaper.
A blurry portrait becomes priceless because the person is no longer here and it’s the only photo I have of them.
A suburban tree-lined street becomes the last place I walked with my friend.
The photograph itself hasn’t changed.
What has changed is everything I now bring to it.
And every passing year adds another invisible layer.
Photography is one of the few art forms that continue to change long after the shutter closes.
The Beauty We Could Not See Then
There have been times in my life that seemed difficult or disappointing. Focusing on navigating through those periods meant that I did not notice the beauty around me.
For several years, I worked in a role that no longer reflected what I knew I could contribute. Being overlooked for a position I believed I was ready for was difficult to accept. While I worked my way through that, I was too focused on myself to see much else.
After my father-in-law’s car accident, Marie and I were focused on his recovery and future living arrangements. We had to pull out of an overseas trip we both were very much looking forward to.
And when it became apparent that he would not be able to continue to live at home alone again, we worked to find him a suitable aged care facility. At the time, beauty was hidden beneath responsibility.
Looking back, those years now feel rich with meaning. I can remember deciding that I would become an expert on a topic that seemed to baffle most of my work colleagues to lift myself back up again. And later being recognised for my expertise in that subject area.
The time Marie and I spent with her father has deepened the relationship we have with him.
Those years were not easy, but they shaped me into who I have become.
Relationships Need Time Too
I think most things in life need time. Often something gained quickly isn’t appreciated as much as something that needed more time.
Looking around me, I can see that some marriages became stronger after hardship.
Some friendships deepened slowly and became the most valued.
Some conversations make sense only years later.
The people who quietly stayed often become more important than those who briefly dazzled.
Time reveals character the way evening light reveals texture in a landscape.
Perhaps relationships, like photographs, reveal their deepest beauty slowly.
Perhaps Time Is an Artist
Writers work with words. Painters work with colour. Sculptors work with stone.
Photographers work with light.
Each uses their medium to express what they want to convey. It may be a novel, a portrait, an abstract that challenges us to find its meaning.
However, time works with memory. Its medium is experience.
The masterpiece it produces is perspective.
It turns ordinary photographs into treasured heirlooms and ordinary days into the memories we wish we could revisit.
Closing
When I look at that photo from Italy now, I realise it was never really about the scene.
It captured a season of my life that I could not yet appreciate.
Perhaps beauty is not always something we discover.
Perhaps beauty is something that waits patiently for time to reveal it.
And perhaps that is why I keep returning to old photographs. Not to remember exactly what happened, but to discover what the years have quietly taught me to see.
Originally published in Full Frame, The Art of Photography