Like kids stalking fireflies on a warm summer night, photographers sneak up on time, inching close behind it, carefully watching, waiting till just the right moment, waiting ... then snap, the quarry is won, careful not to damage its delicate beauty in the process. The prey shines in luminous testimony to the skill of the hunter.
For gifted photographers--those elite time-stalkers--photography escalates from the act of capturing time, to the art of capturing time. Great photographs elicit an emotional response from their audience--some recollection of a specific moment or feeling, rekindled by that visual fragment captured in the photographer's optic snare.
We're confident you'll agree, the following winners in our 1998 photo contest eagerly leap off the page to greet us, and to grab us. A hundred pairs of viewing eyes may generate a hundred different responses, but all are likely to recognize, in one fashion or another, some connection to their own life experience.
Time never stops. But these six frozen-moments-in-time are impressive proof that there is an art to its capture.
