There’s a term called anchoring sometimes used to mean “the development of a process in which the emergence of particular emotions and responses derive from the five senses.” One example of this would be a certain scent that reminds you of that moment in your life. As photographers, it would be great if the photos we took were anchoring phenomena linking the subject to the viewer.
Consider now a photo chosen by the president of a brand new company when creating his profile. After ten years the number of employees has grown, sales have risen, and the company has increased in size. But he senses something is now missing. If this president could connect to himself a decade prior through his profile photo, he might be reminded that at the time he had a strong feeling about something, but now that feeling is missing. If a photo has the power to revive the principles of when the business was launched, isn’t that a type of anchoring?
Photographs represent points of time in a person’s life and play an important role in determining the course of that individual’s future. Our duties as photographers cannot be achieved in a brief space of time. It requires us to continue to work tirelessly!