Look Out 2010

2010 is fast upon us.  Time to put 2009 to bed and look out into the wide expanse of possibility the new year always brings.  So far in my short career as a photographer, I've been on the look out for the shots that are tight and close, revealing a certain kind of tenderness or connection.  This year, I intend to do the same, but maybe from a few steps back.   I wonder what I'll notice about the ways we long for one another with something (anything!) other than my trusty 50mm on my camera.  I wonder what I'll see up close this year with the point of view that the frame can say just as much a little bit more empty, a little bit more wide.

What would happen if you were on the look out for something slightly different for the coming new year?  What would you see through that lens?  What would you explore that's brand new to you?

Show us "the classic" picture you always love to shoot--the vintage you 2009.  Then share something new you'd like to do with that camera as we look out to 2010.

As Sweet a Child As This

I remember one Christmas when my son was still a baby, we decided to go to a Christmas Eve service with friends who were out of town.  At the time, I wasn't exactly thrilled about going to church, but it seemed like the thing to do.  I'll never forget standing in the aisle in the standing room only crowd, my baby in my arms and thinking, "Surely Jesus Christ himself was not as sweet a child as this."

I'm sure it didn't hurt that my ear-piercing screamer was also completely and totally asleep. 

Now my sweet boy is eight years old, and while he's completely disabused me of any notion I might have about his divinity, he can still melt me just like butter.  Especially when I remember him as a baby dozing, so many Christmases ago.

If a sweet child in your life is making your heart beat a little bit faster this Christmas, go ahead and share.  Show us your angels sound asleep (like this sweet Josephine above) or in your arms or full of wonder under the tree.  Merry Christmas, everyone!

The Place Where You Stand

“What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing” --C.S. Lewis

I didn't think much of it the day I snapped this picture.  My sage guide wanted his feet photographed, and I obliged, not knowing at the time that in less than a week this holy man would take me on a trek to the top of a mountain where I would see my longings, my failures, my hopes and dreams in a whole new light.  Epiphanies are like that--unexpected, otherworldly, startling for reasons you can never quite understand.  Thank God, I had Stephanie with me that day to help me recognize the place where I found myself standing--the very center of a miraculous circle of divine support and Love.  I imagine I will never have a moment in my life like that ever again.

Maybe one of the reasons why I love to photograph feet so much is because I like to examine what grounds us and how our feet touch the earth--this same earth that continues to uphold and support us wherever we are, wherever we go.  You can be confused, light-hearted, shaken or full of joy--no matter.  It's always good to be aware of the place where you stand and who it is that stands with you.

Today I'd like to invite you to replicate this photograph either on your own, with someone you live with or with someone you trust.  Show us who stands with you and where you stand--whether it be the linoleum of your kitchen or the macadame of your driveway.  Let us see you standing in your home or on the earth, acknowledging in a new way that you are not alone.

Those Ladies

Odette tells the story of selling chickens and eggs as a child in order to care for the needs of herself and her friends in the refugee camps of Uganda.  By the time we finished, she likes to say.  We felt like those ladies from the big organizations who lend people money.

I always loved that part of the story--little girls feeling as powerful as grownups who were committed to making a change--but I didn't really know what she meant.  Until Tanzania.

In Tanzania, I met those ladies and immediately fell under their spell.  They are quiet, they are wise.  They are measured in their energy and fierce in their focus.  They are staring down poverty--its ravages, its sources, its brutal effects--and they know what to do.  They are executing their own particular brand of justice--passing over the one they are supposed to favor for that girl in the back with fire in her eyes.  They are placing their bets on that live wire, even as they readjust their enormous handbags and stamp the dust out of their fashionable shoes. 

They are believing the girls they choose can show the rest how to escape the bowels of hell. 

Meet Juliet, the program trainer for BEST (Business and Entrepreneurship Support Tanzania).  It is her job to teach the entrepreneurial skills the poorest of the poor need to enter the market.  I watched as she checked in on the women she serves, questioning them like your favorite aunt--the one who believes in you and at the same time won't mince words if you need to hear the truth.  She is tending them like a garden of possibility, one promising seedling at a time.

I don't always take a good picture, she told me. But I doubted it could possibly be true.  How could the camera not love this radiance?  How could the lens turn away from this bedrock determination that everything is going to be just fine?

spirit carries

We are walking on a thin muddy path that borders her rice patty.  This is the land she works with her husband in order to feed her children.  Before she obtained the loan from BEST, a locally founded NGO, she barely had enough to survive.  Her house was nothing more than pieces of sheet metal rigged together with scrap wood and rope.  Now she works this land and sleeps in a simple bed in a solid house with the profits of her own labor.

She is the tiniest slip of a woman, but her smile is wide and her steps are strong.  She is proud to show us what she has wrought with her own hands.  Her pleasure in this task radiates off her body, though she keeps her gaze to the ground and hardly says a word.

I try to wrap my mind around what it takes to keep this field, this family, alive and thriving.  I know I should be watching her hopeful eyes and capable hands for a sign, but all I can see is her feet.  How she carefully picks her way through the muddy field, how she knows where to step, how to walk, where to stand.  How the immense strength of her spirit carries her, even as the frailty of her body dares her destiny and expands her hope.