Love Thursday Featured Fotographer: Kimberly Brimhall

"Carried With Love."

When I saw the photograph, above,  it brought me back to all the feelings that I had while waiting for my own daughter to be born:  the feelings of anticipation, excitement, concern:  the sorts of feelings that all expectant mothers feel, regardless of how their children come to be a part of their families.  And while the feelings may be complex, and plentiful, and even overwhelming, the truth is that ultimately, they all boil down to one emotion:  love.

 Happy Love Thursday, everyone.  This is the second in our monthly series, "Love Thursday Featured Fotographer."  The photograph above was submitted to the Shutter Sisters Flickr pool, taken by the extremely talented Kimberly Brimhall.  Be sure to check out the rest of her photographs here, and you can drop by her blog, Cheating Destiny, for more visual goodness.  And of course,  please leave links to your images of love in the comments below.

And may you experience complex, plentiful and even overwhelming feelings of love today. 

gathering hope

Last night after falling in love with a photo of a beautiful mother and her son, I was led to reading Jen Lemen’s post (when I posted this the site was down but it will be back up again soon) which then in turn took me to Meg’s and then to Belle’s (you all know how it goes) and I was reminded of what the mother in that photo is enduring right now. Jen Ballantyne is one of us—a sister among our vibrant, creative, passionate community. She’s a mother, a photographer, a blogger. Authentic, honest and hopeful. She’s much like you and much like me with a substantial difference; Jen has stage 4 colon cancer.

As I was reading her story again and going over the details of the auction that is happening in her honor, I was inspired to think of something to include to help raise the funds she needs to better take care of herself as she continues her journey as well as what her sons need now and in the future. And then it hit me, of course… I’ll send a photograph! And before I could even decide which I would have printed up, I had an even grander thought—What if other sisters would do the same? What if the Shutter Sisters community pulled together to support one of their own through photographs?

Well? What if? I’ve seen what ya’ll got and there is some money to be raised, let me tell you! In the true spirit of sisterhood, let’s prove there’s more than one way to capture hope through photography.

If you would like to participate in the auction by offering a printed photo that you took to be auctioned off, please email weloveyoujen@gmail.com for instructions ASAP. And be sure to mention that you’re a sister. Thank you in advance for your help.

pet cemetery

This Monday’s post is courtesy of the lovely Steph, who photographs as a foundation for her illustrative work.

Steph bewitches me with her treehouse ramblings, her eye for super-funky little clothes, her sketches, and her perfectly joyful way of capturing life as a mama to scruffy, inquisitive, rollabout boys.

She writes:

There's a perfect riparian hike up an open space preserve near the house that pauses at a quarter mile, if you are looking for it, with a set of mossy stairs that lead down to an old pet cemetery.

As I had hoped, he became saturated with the place: jumping off every stone, stomping on every ant, smudging himself into the wet earth, collecting grubby fistfuls of small sticks along the walk. His proud stride, the happy, bouncy swagger he gets when we're together: it just makes me want to burst. I love it. And, as usual, in anticipation of this display, I brought my camera.

I wish I could sling a camera like the professionals do, working quickly with finesse and understanding the technical aspects of photography, but I simply am too busy trying to capture all of these fleeting moments.

The best photographs I manage to take are those that capture what all mothers adore: acrobatic preschool gestures, the details in terribly food-stained clothes, the paint that gets under fingernails, a mass of bedhead, a noble negative space, the thoughts behind a dark brow or the silence behind an overbite.

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I like to have an image library within the pages of my sketchbook so that I can refer to it for paintings or illustrations. While I have some practice capturing gestures freehand, my photography has been tremendously helpful in compiling studies of their facial proportions so that life-sketching is more fluid.

If I didn't have the photographs I'd have to make the kids pose, which would interrupt everything.

And by everything, I mean that chaos which is a house of boys: flying Legos, the hiss of supersonic jets, beaming laser blasters and the rubble of broken alien spacecraft. Dirty bare feet on clean white sheets. Questions falling like rain, books everywhere.

The dog chases the stampede, and I follow furiously with my camera.

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This week, show us your little boys. Let’s see your favourite puddle-jumpers, sandcastle-stompers and mischief-hunters. TAG! You’re it.

Love Thursday: February 21st, 2008

On Sunday night, our family had a little scare:  Alex wasn't herself all day, sort of just tired and lethargic.  At the end of the day, we finally decided to call her pediatrician on call -- and soon after, found ourselves in the emergency room, with Alex on a nebulizer.  Turns out she was having her first asthma attack, resulting from pneumonia we didn't know she had.

I remember a moment in the emergency room, watching Alex's limp body finally sleeping, at about 1 a.m.  And I remember irrationally thinking:  "I shouldn't have become a mother.  I can't take this.  I can't watch this.  I'm not strong enough."  Of course, immediately afterwards,  I remember saying to myself, "Don't be an ass, Karen.  She's going to be fine.  What's the matter with you?  In the grand scheme of things, this is nothing.  And if this was something truly life-threatening, of course you'd be strong enough.  You'd take a deep breath, and you'd deal.  BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT MOTHERS DO."

Of course, everything is fine now, and all of us are breathing easier.  And I think back to that night, I'm sort of shocked by the intense fear I was experiencing, motivated by intense love.  Who would've thought five years ago I was going to be a mom, let alone love this little kid with the ferocity that I do?  And boy, how I do.

Happy Love Thursday, everyone.  Please leave your links of love in the comments below -- and be sure to check out the photos left in the Shutter Sisters Flickr Pool by keeper of the chocolates and tonyapoole for inspiration.

And may be you bowled over by the love you feel today. 

macro

A newborn fern reaches, twists to bask in the single beam of sun that penetrates the rainforest canopy, a spotlight.

Dew on leaf and nectar supped by butterfly. Sweat on the glass brim of a summer martini. With the macro lens on my 1970s-era Pentax I was dwarfed by worlds within worlds, transported hands-first into shimmering giantness, enveloped. Wrapped in more life and light and vividness than I’d ever known existed—that which could only be discerned by getting really. close. up.

Happily engulfed by the otherworld inside a macro lens, the big outside mattered less.

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I don’t have so much diversity to offer these days. Not what's botanical and artistic and profound aside from what lives and dances and giggles inside these four walls, this small house on the edge of a seasalty coast, these two boys, this mama’s life.

So week after week it’s the first kid, then the second. Then the first, then the second. And I’m sorry for that and feel entirely humbled by all of you and the gorgeousness in the pool but 1) there is an ice-storm outside, oppressive and bone-chilling and not so welcoming for baby-laden photo excursions; and 2) in the effort of capturing my boys I find the same vividness, the same meditation as before.

These days, I’m macro-less. But camera pointed at these faces, the wonder returns.

Wishing I could crawl in between those eyelashes, turn around and see from his vantage point how the world looks, as he studies it.

You don’t mind, do you?

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This week, I’d love to see your favourite macro shots. Tide me over until light and weather and childcare and disposable income and a good deal on a lens conspire to set me loose among the dewy ferns again.

Gimme a dose, willya?