Tinted Lenses

Eyes are the windows to the soul, and photography is a doorway to the mind.
Pictures give you access to another person's eye -- not their eyes, so not their soul, but their creative point of view, so...maybe a little part of their soul.
Pictures tell stories and speak volumes about so many things -- a person's outlook on life, his focus, his sense of color or sense of style. Even his sense of humor.
I spent an hour and a half tonight browsing a friend's photos on Facebook -- profile pictures, artsy albums, fun collections. The differences between his albums and a different friend's shots are the differences between the two. One takes a lot of black and whites, a lot of low level lighting, high-contrast pictures; still life shots, self-portraits, close-ups and awkward angles that somehow turn out beautifully. The other takes dozens of pictures of the everyday, of people and places and things that are constantly coming and going and changing -- flowers, landscapes, insects.
Photography takes a minute, a moment, a fraction of a second that is past before you can blink, and freezes it. Stills it forever. Makes it something you can go back and look at always. A smile, a giggle, a shout of surprise, a solitary tear that escapes a half-closed eye. The moments you choose to capture, the ones that aren't accidental, say so much about the way you look at life. The angles you use, the lighting you seek, the segment of a landscape or the characteristic of a person's face on which you choose to focus explain your point of view more clearly than your words might do.
So what am I postulating? What have I gathered; what life lesson have I perceived to be flung out to me; what half-baked, crackpot wisdom or insight as to the meaning of life will I thrust into cyberspace, regardless of its insipid and preposterous qualities, or the self-contradicting nature possessed by most of my musings?
I don't know. I have nothing to offer. I'm merely curious.
I want to look at more pictures; I want to understand [you] more.
That's all.