Photography & Beauty

The art of photography seems interesting, even though I have very little experience with it. I like the idea of capturing a moment or an image and having a permanent graphic record. I like the fact that an image that may seem boringly commonplace to one person might seem extraordinarily powerful to another. It seems to me that the most beautiful and compelling images are the ones that are often overlooked or written off as "ordinary". I think about the film American Beauty, where Ricky sees an abundance of beauty within the moment of a plastic bag blowing in the wind. To the average person, that would be a mundanely forgettable moment, but to Ricky it was the encapsulation of beauty. One of the messages of that film was that we are constantly surrounded by beauty; we just sometimes have to look closely to find it. I think that the truest beauty is usually not that which immediately strikes the senses; it is the kind that one has to be observant and open-minded in order to discover.