Gleam In Our Eyes
Jackson, Michigan
Manistique, Michigan
Had a great vacation in the Upper Peninsula last week. More to come.
Here’s another quick project: Grab the kids, find a trail, and start shooting.
I used to do more of this type of work, coming up with a simple idea and grabbing the family to execute it. Now, with a busy life, it’s harder to think this way.
Thank goodness for my wife, who saw a sunny evening and a trail full of spring flowers and got us out of the house.
Small, lovely steps.
Projects don’t need to be fancy, or long, or all that involved.
Sometimes, all you need is an idea and a bit of time to see it through. In this case, it was playing in the backyard with the kids and wondering, how many corners can I find?
This has been my way out of a recent photography slump: simply shooting what’s around me, and finding something creative to say with my everyday surroundings.
Spring and summer means more time outside, more birthday parties and events, more walking and ice cream shop visits and hiking. All creative fuel for making photos. All slump busters.
It’s true: I take a lot of photos of our kids.
So many pictures that, when it comes round to the end of the year and I work on our annual photo book, I can never fit all the photos I take.
It makes me wonder: what will the kids remember? Which photos will the kids treasure? Will they care at all? Or will they see dad as a fussy ol’ snapshot artist?
Hard to say! But I keep snapping away, regardless.
Here’s what I do know: when my mom passed away, I didn’t care about getting anything else but our photo albums from when we were kids. I poured over those albums growing up, and in a lot of ways those pictures helped anchor my memories. As a kid, the past is fuzzy. But with photos, it can come to life.
Maybe that’s all the legacy we need.