Looking through old photos is a fast, easy way to take a free trip into your imagination. The emotions rekindled by seeing friends and family or recalling how you felt at the start of a big life adventure release a seed of imagination that’s free to wander again, rekindled and fresh.
There’s something fascinating about seeing a moment in time, soaking up the small details in the background or noticing a look on someone’s face in a new light. The current you sees differently, feeling the pang of change combined with a sticky twinge of nostalgia.
Photos are true emotional windows that are also a great springboard for the imagination. They inspire you to think about how life has unfolded and the twisting, windy road you’ve traveled (or burned) in your wake.
Why the Moments Matter
This weekend I watched the first half of the documentary Time Zero – The Last Year of Polaroid Film. One thing stood out to me very clearly. Creator Edwin Land was making a product but he really had a mission, and that was to craft a tool anyone could use to inspire and grow the seed of creativity within them. By using a new type of camera that was essentially a “portable darkroom”, the way you see the world in that moment could be frozen in time and instantly seen and shared.
It was a very powerful development that gave people a way to access the inner creative guide and follow their imagination more freely. Polaroids acted like a permission slip to experiment, with the added fun of “shaking” the captured moment into existence before your eyes.
How awesome is that?
Photos are the Artifacts of your Imagination and the Springboard
I like to think of photos as little artifacts handcrafted by you. They hold the moment in a suspended place and time, which allows you to pick up a story the way it is now and rewrite the future of it any way you want. It’s the real power of the creative force within you.
So…are you giving yourself a chance to see the old you in a new way, appreciating life from a different perspective? Are the inspirations of your young heart still alive, or do they need to be brushed off and revived? Have you long outgrown the stories you tell yourself, like clothes from when you were 5 years old?
Photos can keep you lamenting over the past, or act as a springboard to take you in a direction that leads your heart where it’s always wanted to go.
Where do you want to go? Let your imagination lead the way. There are new moments waiting for you to arrive.
Photocredit: seventwentysk