Strangers Only for a Moment

 I stood in the crowd taking pictures of Sleeping Beauty's castle at Disneyland while my husband and kids took off to go on their favorite rides. In typical Disney fashion, loud Christmas music filled the park around me.  To my right, as I had my eye to the viewfinder on my camera, I heard a melodic male voice softly singing along to the Christmas music.   I turned my head to see a lone gentleman on a park bench who instantly reminded me of my grandfather.  I'm a sucker for the older generation.  I gravitate to them, always have, so I made my way over to the park bench and took a seat.  More importantly, I wanted to photograph him and I knew before my time was up on that bench, I would.

He smiled at me as I sat down and I complimented him on his singing voice.  In his broken english, he told me that Christmas was his favorite time of year.  I told him it was my favorite time, too, especially the music.  Now I have to tell you, I have no problem talking to perfect strangers.  Ask my husband and he'll tell you it can be a curse or a blessing, but in instances like these, I consider it a blessing.  Everyone has a story, everyone, and I want to know them.  I just knew this man sitting next to me, who I wanted to photograph and who was singing Christmas carols in his sweet, broken english, had a story. I continued the conversation by asking if he was a local or visiting from out of town and over the next hour I got my story, the story of a man who fell in love with his wife when she was 14 and he was 15 in their small village in Italy and who married young and came to our country 28 years ago to start a new life; about how his wife became a teacher because she loved children and how they raised children of their own and now have many grand children; about why his kids brought him to Disneyland with them because they didn't want him to be alone after his wife had passed away a year ago and how he was quite content to just sit on that park bench and people watch all day long.  He grew quiet for a moment and then in his broken english he said with a smile, I'm 80 and life is good, and once again he began to hum to the music.  It was then that I asked him if I could take his picture.  When he hesitated, I explained how he reminded me of my grandfather and how I missed him.  With a dismissive wave of his hand he said, Sure, why not?  He didn't seem to want to look at the camera so I took a profile shot.  He wanted to see his picture and when I showed him he asked, You like?  I do, I said. He seemed pleased with my answer and giving my hand a quick pat, he went back to people watching.

How about you? Have you ever seen someone you didn't know, wondered what their story was and thought, I would love to take a photo of that person.  If you have, share your photos with us.  If you haven't and have always wanted to, try stepping out of your comfort zone and do it. Ask, and I bet they'll have a story to share, too. 

balance

In my family, I fill a number of roles.  They include, in no particular order, the role of primary caregiver, wife, mother, friend, housekeeper, bookkeeper, librarian, storyteller, nurse, educator, cheerleader, and comedian. I have to put on my pants and fill the role of democrat, republican, and independent.  I am a chef, artist,  singer/songwriter, engineer, seamstress, stylist, decorator, journalist…

The list goes on.

Finding a balance between all of these roles may be one of the biggest challenges in my life, aside from trying how to fix a hole in the soft organza fabric that details the 15 princess dresses that are taking over my dining room table.  Not to mention trying to figure out how to get my 3 year old to eat.  Or sleep.  Or stop screaming all the time, especially when the baby is sleeping.  And to my 4 year old? No, I have no idea where the warthog toy is that you haven’t played with in 2 years but are suddenly obsessed with finding so stop asking me before my head explodes from repeating myself.

It’s all about balance, but how do you find that balance?

For me, it is all about moderation.  In regards to photography, and filling the role of the journalist, I find that I need to allow some moments to pass by, unrecorded. Picking up my camera was one of the most significant choices that I’ve made in my life.  Since then, I’ve taken thousands upon thousands of images.  It has become a part of who I am, and it has made birthday and holiday shopping for me incredibly easy.

I often need to remind myself, however, that my camera is an extension of who I am, and I cannot allow it to singularly define who I am (though it certainly does contribute to that definition). 

I think (I hope) that we all have moments that we would just like to leave our cameras at home.  Times that we just want to live in the moment and not be the one to document it. 

I try to have an ongoing dialog with myself, and when I wake up in the morning I promise myself that I will be there, and be present in my life and the lives of my husband and children.  I will use my camera with intention, and that moderation will allow me to find the balance I need to not only enjoy the time with my family, but it will save me from the guilt and regret of not getting any shots along the way.

How do you moderate yourself?  What sort of dialog do you use?  How do you come to the understanding that sometimes it is ok to leave your camera at home? That sometimes it is ok to allow the moment to pass, unrecorded?

Image and words courtesy of the lovely Meg Fahrenbach of Tea & Brie.

And hey! Don't forget that we're giving away some cool MOO products and a Lensbaby here this week! Awesome.

souvenirs

On the morning of our last full day in Gjilan, Kosovo, we sat around the breakfast table and discussed souvenirs. We'd been there all week, doing art workshops for high school students and now we finally had a tiny bit of free time. The plan was to hit the local Saturday market and hit it hard. As I began to make my list of people to shop for and what to bring back, a friend leaned over and asked where my name was on that list. What was I going to bring back for myself? I don't know, I answered. I hadn't actually thought about it. I'd been fixated on so many other things--- what my kids might like, what my husband might get a kick out of, how much I could feasibly fit in my suitcase, what I could get past customs, blah blah blah. I hadn't actually thought about what I might like to bring back for myself.

Photographs, I finally told her. That's my souvenir of choice. 

What I realized was that it didn't really matter if I found something at the market for myself. Not that I wouldn't pick up a few goodies, you know. If I saw something I really liked. But I thought about the stack of polaroids up in the hotel room. The big fat stack that sat on the small wooden table next to my bed. How each one told a spectacular little story. The group of small children I ran into during an afternoon walk, how I crossed my eyes to make them laugh. The old wooden easels that belonged to the freshest young painters. Entire shops solely devoted to the selling of eggs. Eggs. Just eggs. The bowl of pinkish red apples hand-picked for us by the mother of an artist whose home we visited. My bare feet on the rug of the most authentically bohemian artist studio. The burnt sienna rooftops of Gjilan. And the hanging laundry. My goodness, the hanging laundry.

Yep. I had my souvenirs. Anything else I picked up for myself on that last magic day in the market in Gjilan would be the cherry. The cherry on top of a big fat happy Albanian sundae.  

What do you bring back from your travels? Are your photographs your souvenirs? Please do share one with us today.

How we move through this world

I had lunch with a friend today. When you’re self-employed and work from home like I do it’s always a treat to meet a friend for lunch somewhere lovely: today it was Jamie’s Italian in Bath. When our starters arrived I whipped out my iPhone, stood up and took a few shots of the bruschetta slathered in olive oil and crushed borlotti beans—luckily Hanne knew not to start eating until I’d got my shot. The same thing happened when our pasta arrived, and our coffees too. It’s not often I get to eat in restaurants so taking photos to record the occasion makes sense. But I also do this when I’m at home. And when I’m in the supermarket. And when I’m eating breakfast with my 18 month-old nephew. I take photos of the fallen leaves at my feet and broken doorways and daisy circles. I take photographs to anchor myself more firmly in the moment and use my cameras to capture the potential photos I see everywhere I look. It doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing—for as long as I am able to take a breath and lift my camera to my eye, I will be creating images with pixels and film. Do you have this urge too?

My constant—some would argue obsessive—picture taking is simply the way I move through the world. Photography is like a form of meditation for me and when life is feeling harder than usual I take myself outside and look at the world through my lens. There’s always a new way to see things—it’s uncanny, really. When I was grieving the untimely death of my partner it was my camera that helped me reconnect with myself and my world, and it’s the reason why I know that creativity is the fastest way to access our truest selves.

Next month I’m leading a brand new e-course sharing everything I know about photography. Photo Meditations: Infusing Your Images with Soul is a five-week exploration of the inspirational and the practical for anyone who wishes to sink deeper into their own photographic journey. We’ll be diving into compositional theory, self-portraiture, shooting for your blog, story-telling and so much more. I should probably mention right now that I’m not a very technical sort of photographer—I’m going to be sharing some important basics in the first week, but I’m not concerned with histograms and what have you. What excites me, and what I hope to pass on to my students, is a passion for creating pictures that tell stories. That move the viewer. That convey what I feel. That hold layers of meaning. That delight the eye. That’s what we’ll be exploring in Photo Meditations. 

Would you like to join me? 

Please leave a comment here between now and Friday (midnight EST) for a chance to win a complementary registration for Photo Meditations!

Images and words by Susannah Conway; photographer, writer and the creator of the Unravelling e-courses. A Polaroid addict and very proud aunt, her first book, This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart (Globe Pequot Press), launches in June 2012. You can read about her shenanigans at SusannahConway.com. Registration for her new class, Photo Meditations, opens this Saturday, October 15th.

**Congratulations to Julie Fairchild for winning a spot in Susannah's class! Thanks to all for commenting.

what you don't see

I have to tell you how amazingly freeing it is to show you the photo above.  When I started writing this post and looking for photos that show the, “what you don’t see”, I started finding and laughing at all sorts of discarded photos in my computer files.  What you could perceive from the first fireplace photo is that my house is perfect enough to get this shot or as one comment I received on the fireplace photo, “It’s like you live in a magazine”. ..ha, not with four kids and a dog! That is just photography magic (and clever cropping) my dear friends. I’m pretty sure a magazine wouldn’t have an unfinished fireplace, dusty wood floors, a discarded newspaper and wires poking out where once there was a flat screen. There is so much we don’t see in photography.

 I took the “pretty” fireplace photo before we were finished because I needed inspiration.  Priming and painting an entire two story, floor to ceiling fireplace is not an easy task and taking this photo kept me focused. It reminded me that soon, hopefully soon, I would have a wonderful showpiece in the house in which to hang our family’s stockings and decorate with each new season.

Photos speak volumes in both what it shows and doesn’t show the viewer. Often times what you don’t see, the real shot,  is the most beautiful part.  I have a photo of one of our newly arrived chicks sitting on a window sill looking out.  In hindsight what I wish I had done was take a step back or two.  What you would have seen then was my sweet husbands’ hands cupped underneath the window sill, steadying himself there just in case miss chick decided to jump, simply because I had asked.  To me, that memory means so much more than the professional looking chick photo. It reminds me how real and wonderful life is outside the perfect point of focus.  How although a pretty picture has its place to keep us inspired, the not so perfect shots (or uncropped versions) shouldn’t be so easily discarded, because they too have a story to tell. The newspaper on the ottoman in the right side of the fireplace photo…my kids sharing a chair, laughing and reading the Sunday comics in pj’s.

A dear friend of mine posted this photo on flickr a few years ago. Out of  the hundreds of beautiful and perfect shots she has taken through the years, this one stands out most in mind.  Why?  Because it is so real.  It is her and I adore her.  It is her life on her farm summed up in a single photo and I find it so achingly beautiful. Today, show us the real, the perfectionist, the messy, the inspirational, the uncropped and the gorgeously, beautiful parts of YOU.

Images and words courtesy of the lovely Andie edwards.