"Sisters." This a photo these girls will frame and hang in their university dorm rooms.
Several years ago when I lived in London, I worked with a woman named Rebecca. Rebecca was young, fresh out of university and always had a twinkle in her eye that made you think that she was in on an unspoken joke.
Soon after I met her, Rebecca's father, with whom she was very close, lost his battle with cancer. It was the one subject about which Rebecca wasn't entirely comfortable speaking. One day, however, I passed her desk, and found her looking at several beautiful black-and-white photos.
"God, Rebecca, those are beautiful! What are they?"
She smiled, a mixture of bemused exasperation and wistful nostalgia. "They're photos my dad took when I was a child," she said. "He was always walking around with that bloody camera."
Turns out Rebecca's dad was a serious amateur shutterbug -- and his favourite subjects were the members of his family. There were beautiful close-ups of Rebecca with her sisters, stunning ones of her beautiful young mother, even a staged self-portrait of himself and the whole family sitting around a laden lunch table, laughing, with their forks midway between their plates and their mouths. And damned if Rebecca's twinkle wasn't in his own eyes.
"I thought I'd have them framed, and hang them in my new place," she said. "I think he would've loved that," she added quietly.
Since that day, I find myself looking at photos of kids with family members, and when I find one that particularly moves me, I'm always quick to mention to the photographer: "That's one your adult child will frame and hang in her home," or "Oh, he'll definitely hang that over his mantel." Often people laugh. "Think so?" they'll say, dismissing my comment as idle compliment. But I can't help it: because of Rebecca, I notice these things -- and it's something I always aim for when shooting my own photographs of my daughter with the people she loves.
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Happy Love Thursday, everyone. Please leave links of your images depicting love in the comments below. Also, to shake things up a bit, I thought I'd feature a contributor to our Shutter Sisters Flickr pool every second Thursday of the month. This month's featured Love Thursday photo is by the talented Beebee Mod (aka Jen) who also happens to have a blog. Thanks, Jen, for letting me use your image!
And everyone: may the next shot you take of a child with a loved one be the image she hangs the entryway of her first home. ;-)
Thursday, April 3, 2008 by 
