Pause,

A moment of pause for photography that causes you to

What evokes more unfiltered human emotion than death, love and sacrifice?  One of Boston.com’s recent “The Big Picture” photo galleries featured all three, in highlighting something that often gets lost in the big picture of a war: the people.

The photo gallery, titled Armstice Day Remembrances and posted on Nov 13, includes images you might expect to make the front page, and might not expect to leave your memory anytime soon:

…A shriveled hand dropping a red poppy on The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

…A triple amputee Afghanistan war veteran gazing upward  during a memorial ceremony, in a wheelchair and still in full uniform.

…The President of the United States walking stoically through section 60 of Arlington National Cemetary.

These are photos you inspect closely because you want to stay those extra few seconds…it’s that interesting, that artful. Most importantly, this gallery was one that makes you pause, and think. 

One of it’s predecessing galleries, however, makes you gaze.

“Launch of the Ares I-X” , another boston.com Big Picture gallery of late, was admittedly the most NASA gear I’ve seen since I watched Tom Hanks & crew sweat it out in the 1995 Ron Howard film Apollo 13.

But the most memorable picture had nothing to do with landing gear, thrust or simulator crew modules.

In a photograph sure to make you pause, photographer Bruce Weaver captures a perfect example of earth’s distant, curious relationship to whatever’s up there in the stars-a beautiful and wordless example that either my autistic 10 year old little brother or the NASA astronauts themselves could appreciate-could crack a smile at.

What is it, you ask?

I’ll phrase it how my 10 year old brother would: “An alligator swimming next to a rocket ship.”

What do all of these photos have in common? They make you pause. They make you think. I imagine the cliche “a picture’s worth a thousand words” may be mentioned-either explicitly or, more than likely, implicitly-in our class discussion tonight. The cliche is too true to die, and the best pictures are the ones that don’t make you say anything at all.

For a moment, just a moment before you go about your day, you are immersed. Then it’s time to blink, and you’re changed, a tiny bit.

Those are the best photos.