my journal
Images, Thoughts & Musings
Going through images for a journal submission, and I stumbled across these gorgeous shots of my sister-in-law and my incredible nephew. How I missed them in the first place, I have no idea.
The love here is so strong, so present. Mommy love is immediate, unconditional, and indestructible. What would the world be without mommy love?
I am playing catch up on my blogging tonight, as I sort through images to use in my galleries on my website. (I know, I said that it was ALMOST ready before the holidays! It's coming. Promise. I haven't given up…) This new born lifestyle shoot was not just with any baby. This is Samuel. This is my nephew. He might possibly be the most beautiful baby boy I have ever known. I have been away from Connecticut for two months and upon arrival at my parents, I was greeted with a recent photo of him on the refrigerator. Oh my, how he has grown! I can't believe how much these little loves change in those first few months. Those first few years.
I showed up at my brother and sister in-law's home one afternoon last November with a couple of cameras and a whole lot of time. Samuel was is no mood to be put down and posed, so I just followed Marisa around as she rocked him, and sang to him, and changed his pee-pee diapers. He cried, and Marisa tried to figure out what he needed. Hungry? Tired? Gassy? It all came back to me so quickly, those feelings of becoming a mom. When you have read every book on every subject, but still, nothing can compare to just taking that time to get to know him. Because he is the only one like him. He is yours, not you sister's or you cousin's or you best friend's. The author of 'what to expect' had never met him when she wrote that book. He is the only him. And he is yours. Wow. So I did all I could do, and I smiled as an intense feeling of gratitude overcame me while I watched this beautiful moment unfold before me.. A brand-new Mommy and her brand-new son getting to know each other a little better.
I can NOT wait to see this little love bug while I'm here.
This post is long overdue. But I am one who functions on feeling and energy and the universe's directions, and the universe hadn't directed me to do it until now. This shoot happened at the end of August in Connecticut with my amazingly creative and inspirational sister-in-law, Ally Davis. Ally is a graduate of the New School in New York City. She studied dance, and is currently in the process of building her very own dance company, Visceral Movement. I asked Ally if she wanted to do this shoot with me, as I had been developing an idea for a photography project called 'The Beautiful Woman Project' which is a project focused on exposing the raw, undecorated beauty of women by photographing them without makeup on. I had this whole beautiful end of summer scenario in mind, and her being a dancer just added to the wild, imaginative, dream-like surrealism of the story; what happens when two creative mommies who have such limited time to themselves, leave the house at 7 am on a sunday morning to get into a field as the sun is rising with flowy dresses and dew drops on the grass??? Well, magic of course. I mean, it couldn't have been a more perfect shoot for launching my project.
But then what you ask? Well, life. A major lack of personal time. Finding out that our home was contaminated with mold and we had to move out. It has now been over 6 months and we are still not back.. (although we will be able to get back in within the next couple of weeks!! woo hoooo!). So I was waiting. I was waiting for the perfect time, the perfect moment, the perfect platform to share this project that is very very dear to my heart. The thing is though, sometimes that perfect time we are waiting for doesn't come.
I have always had the intention of sharing these beautiful images, but it wasn't until this past week when Ally shared one of them on her instagram, that she and I started talking about our next collaboration and I remembered how incredibly liberating and creatively invigorating that morning was this past August with her. We were free as birds, wild children.. not another soul in sight. It was just her and me and my camera and the warm warm sunrise. I remember her thanking me after we finished, because she had been feeling a lack of inspiration recently and she just felt so good afterwards. And of course, I thanked her because I was feeling the very same way.
I was asked recently by my friend, Allie O'Conner(co-blogger at Little Red's Well), my thoughts on creativity, as they are in the process of doing a 50 day creativity challenge (#scratchfor50). This thing that we are all blessed with, creativity, it's a gift. It's a delicate gift that needs to be acknowledged, nurtured, and respected. And when we give it these things, what it gives back to us is nothing short of magic.
So, I have been waiting to post these images to my blog talking about the beautiful woman project, but in the last twenty-four hours, I have realized that instead, I want to share them as what they are to me today, which is a reminder of what can happen if you let the magic in.
I am learning this craft called photography. I am making lots and lots of mistakes. I am also capturing lots and lots of beautiful moments of some incredibly beautiful people, and for this I am so grateful. Often, in photography, people ask what your focus is. Although I have not completely honed in on one specific direction, I with out a doubt want to capture people. People in all of their flaws and perfect imperfectness. Their beauty. Their sadness. Their most happy moments. Their most vulnerable. But most importantly, I want to capture their smiles. Laughter in a photograph for me is like a cup of coffee in the backyard on a warm, sunny morning in july. A sunset on the beach on a late august evening. Being curled tightly with those I love by a cozy fire in the middle of a snowy december evening.. and that first really warm spring day when all of the green seems to just have magically reappeared overnight, and the tulips and crocus have begun to sprout their heads. Capturing a real moment of laughter is like medicine for me. I can't help but smile when seeing it.
Ali and I set out on a chilly morning this past November in Farmington, CT. What we thought was going to be an hour or so ended up being a three hour excursion. We laughed. A lot. We wrapped ourselves in lots of blankets(and may or may not have changed a couple of times in the parking lot of Winding Trails). We hopped in a canoe and hoped that we wouldn't float away.
I am still learning this craft of photography. I am still making lots of mistakes. I threw away probably half of the photos I took, if not more. I took FOREVER to finish editing them(which has been a lesson all on it's own). But I take away soooo much from every shoot I do. And among the many things I learned from this one, I above all realized that I love capturing smiles. Joy. Laughter. What a gift to give someone, a frozen moment of their joy. What a gift they can give to their loved ones, their children.
Thank you Ali for coming out in the cold with me this day.. You are a truly beautiful woman, and your radiant smile is contagious. Keep sharing it.. We need more happy faces like this in the world.
xoxo
5 days in the house with a fever, runny nose, and now a sad little cough. But with a little topless blues guitar you are bound to have fun.. even with boogers running down your face.
