We are true pagans

"The sun will rise, and we will try again."

— Twenty-One Pilots, "Truce"

During my short vacations, i didn’t do much photography. I chose to sleep, swim and share time with my loved ones. There was an exception to that. I woke up as the soft blue horizon threatened to eliminate the stars in the morning sky. I made some coffee and drove towards the sea. At the beach, everything was quiet and still, like the rocks and sand. Half an hour later our parent star came up into a veil of orange haze. It’s funny and weird that many people don’t know or realize that the stars are just distant suns. Anyway, as I lay on the grainy carpet of sand a thought came to me -the only cloud that took place during that day- about the relationship between astronomers and photographers. Huge pieces of glass scan the blackness of the heavens, searching through time and space for tiny fragments of faraway signals, doomed stars, dazzling photons of distant galaxies, and vast oceans of violent hydrogen explosions. But we all know that examining the wonders of heaven is just a very informative glimpse of the past, right? Astronomers explore and collect what the universe still remembers. Photographers on the other hand also relate to memory. They create it. Memories of places, people, events, and feelings. The difference is that photographers instead of math, worship only one God with many forms. Light. Born from our sun or a billion dying suns it doesn’t matter. We follow the light. We travel for it. We are waiting for it. We think about it. We illustrate it. We create with it. We worship it. This is frankly, an order of illuminated weirdos trying to catch the awe of the light. A solar-based cult wrapped around a DSLR. We are true pagans.