Focus

Throughout the day, we move up and down along our journey. Passing from light to dark and back to light again. Sometimes when the planets align, when the sun is nearing its descent, I'm given a gift called 'time of day'. I sit half in and half out of the kitchen door. My bare feet on the back step while my son plays in the dirt with his trucks. He lays there all Zen like, lost in his own world while I sit with camera in hand as dinner simmers on the stove. The late afternoon sunlight streams in, and I can't help to think that life couldn't get much better than this. The closeness we have while in a different headspace from each other is most magical. I learn of him, of all his details while behind my camera. Of course some days, my camera is used as a shield or filter for true-life realities not so sunny. But on an afternoon like this, my camera is the magnifying glass. And the beauty I find is that he is willing to let our worlds gently mingle. We brush up against each other at this time of day. When I am mother/photographer/dinner burner/chore slacker/multi-tasker. And he is the barefoot boy child zooming trucks over clumps of dirt.

As he grows into himself, I find myself a mere observer. Not completely understanding the language or the rules of his boy planet. Sometimes I inch up close to him with my camera to capture this life of his that is only his. This breath as it slips and slides and grows before my very eyes. Wanting to remember it all overwhelms me. And so I focus. I have come to learn by taking photos throughout my days and weeks that what I'm trying to preserve is my perception of how life is. What I want to preserve is the way the moment finds my heart. While looking through my photo archives, I discover that i mainly focus on sunlight: how it feels splashing down across his shoulders, how it appears to me on afternoons like this. Today I focus on the leaf he discovers and offers up to me on a rock pedestal, "Keep it safe for me, Momma." This is his gift to me, and it's more precious than I ever knew. He gives me this time, this memory, and this space to document it as I see it.

There's something magical viewing life through someone else's camera lens. Most often it's a stranger... a person who captures something so universal, that you instantly feel as if you know them. There's kinship in the subject of the photo, the angle, the color, or the focus that speaks directly to you. This sense of familiarity is what keeps me coming back for more. I find myself at the doorstep of Shutter Sisters every morning with my cup of chai. I'm so grateful for this space to share my own today. So, share with me a bit of yourself, will you? What is your focus? The motion, the solitude. the calm, the chaos? Leave some links and share your focus, so we may learn a bit about yourself as well.

Photo and post courtesy of today's Honorary Sister/Guest Blogger Meredith Winn (aka camera shy momma).

bits and bobs

When he's in his highchair I can't resist: my hands find their way underneath to squeeze his legs, my nose to his nose as he wracks in giggles, squeals in my ear.

Three months premature and just two pounds when he was born, his first shoes are a size three, newborn-sized. He's two weeks shy of his first birthday.

As adorable as they may be, full-term babies are comically enormous to me now, linebackers. Under the cuff of these pants I can feel his calf between forefinger and thumb, his skin chilly there as it always is, skin soft, mine. I could look at this photo in fifty years and have that sensation as clear as today.

Someday he'll be a man, hardened and fuzzy all over, muscled and definitive both in personality and stride. And I'll remember him as he was, lying in humid incubation next to his mirror-brother, waiting for life to begin.

+++++

Baby-feet, lover-torso, sisters holding hands. Show us piecemeal photography today, will you?

babyface

He watches a fairground ride and I wonder: what's he thinking?

Sure, they just lie there in carseat or on floor, less photographically diverse than hopping and squishing and squealing toddlers. But OH! My... the wonder that awaits a patient soul. This Easter Monday, show us your favourite baby-absorbing-world captures - with all the cereal-encrusted cheeks and gummy grins.

Because nothing quite says peace and hope like cheeks like those.