picture taker

I haven't been too good about blogging this year. 

I look at my total posts to date and figure if I'm even going to make it look like "a post a day" I'm going to have to double and triple up on posts from here til the end of the year.

((not going to happen))

My writing habits have never been consistent. I'll go on mad sprees and the words pour like water but then... I don't know. It's not a drought per se, nor could I ever call it any kind of writer's block, but it's just the lack of desire to actually download those thoughts from this addled brain of mine and commit them to paper or post. I suppose that's why photography began to take a firmer hold of me -  it was a new way for me to tell stories, and not just my own, but the stories of all the people I know and love.

I started dating a wonderful man recently and in getting to know each other I began talking out loud and in earnest, I think for the first time, about why photography has become so special to me. Because being allowed into someone's life long enough to take a photo - even if it's a passing stranger n the street, you are being given an instantaneous and unique opportunity to experience their life. To freeze that split second of existence forever. And to be invited into some of the most momentous and important events in one's life? There are few greater honors, I'd like to think.

When I've been asked to photograph weddings, or a child's first birthday, or the excitement mixed with tender trepidation behind the eyes of parents to be - how special is that? Not everyone is allowed into those worlds, let alone with the free reign to get up close and infiltrate the instant a memory is made. 

Sometimes I wonder, when my subjects have no clue that I'm as close as I am, or that my lens is trained in their direction, if those quiet, fleeting moments that land themselves into my photos are the kind of moments that are collected somewhere for us to watch on that bigscreen in heaven. And I'm not just talking about the moments I actually get a picture of, but the ones that happen between shutter clicks, the ones that happen when I'm checking the battery life of my camera, the ones that happen when no photographer is anywhere near and occur before you even realize you're creating a memory you wish to God you could hold onto forever. 

I hope so. 

I hope there is a great giant shoebox filled with all of the snapshots I missed in life but that God was there to capture for me so that someday, when I'm sitting on the floor there in heaven ((because I/m gonna go ahead and assume heaven has a floor and that sometime in all of that eternity I'll have time to reminisce on all the happy moments I had in life)) I can leaf through the images and remember and think to myself how glad I was someone was there to take a picture of all those times I'd want to keep forever.

I think I got more than a little bit off my train of thought there ((I don't know how, that never happens)).

My point in all of this drivel is that even though words have been my chosen medium for as long as I can remember - and though I have absolutely zero intent on ever choosing otherwise - I do believe that photographs may have inched right up alongside my precious words as my favorite way to communicate.

After all, a picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words so as far as I can tell the two were always meant to go hand in hand.