I wrote the following page to express my view on photography and why it has had such an impact on my life.  It explains why I love to photograph and what drives me to want to share my gift and passion with others.

"The Impact of a Photograph"

"Photographs are powerful triggers that stimulate our emotions and senses.  They are our hard copy memories.  When we view them, we are instantly taken back to relive the moment. We recall the feelings and the emotions that we felt. We recall the mood and the atmosphere of the day.  We recall all of the beauty, love and happiness experienced and expressed by the people that shared in that moment with us. 

Photography records everything that was a part of the exact moment when that memory was made.  Unlike anything else, photography can effectively freeze the moment, our moment, in time.  Our photographs are our tangible memories. They become the physical evidence of our personal histories. 

Life is short and time passes too quickly. As the years go by we find ourselves struggling to remember the treasured moments of our past. While our memories can fade and our thoughts can become cloudy, we long to hold on to the details of our past because remembering the past creates a sense of comfort and purpose within us.

We wish to recapture those past feelings of bliss and those moments of happiness.  We want to remember how our children looked from the very beginning of their lives and how they changed and grew so quickly.  We want to record and document their accomplishments and the skills that they learned to master. We are able to capture and record their developing personalities along the way that are the little pieces of the whole that makes up the unique persons that they are. We want to remember the love and innocence of our children and the closeness and good times shared with family & friends. We want to recall and recreate that sense of accomplishment, pride, or indescribable beauty...the beauty of something or someone that was so incredible that it made us gasp with admiration and appreciation.

We can remember these events and moments when they are captured forever within our irreplaceable photographs."

~ Diane Maxwell Mateer