I am a photographer. I capture memories and milestones that beg to be remembered. I turn toothless smiles into priceless keepsakes. I decorate your home with beauty you never even imagined was possible until you saw my vision in print. I don’t mean to sound conceited or anything, but I think I am one in a million; that rare jewel that is a rainbow only seen on special occasions.
Ansel Adams said it best when he said “when words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” This is, I think, the best way to sum up the reasoning behind every photographer’s love and desire for the perfect image. That old adage that an image is worth a thousand words? Well, it’s true, 150 percent. There are so many times when I find myself trying to describe to someone the sunrise that I captured that morning and then I stop speaking and simply show them the picture. Sometimes ordinary words are not enough to convey the beauty and simplicity that exists in a moment.
If I were to be totally honest, I live for cameras. Digital, 35 mm, iPhone, disposables—it doesn’t matter; I’ll use them all and cherish the photographs captured by every lens. Over the years I have taken so many pictures that I actually had to purchase a backup hard drive to store them all. I guess you could say I have an obsession because I cannot seem to delete a single image. They are moments, memories and details of a life that I strive to live to the absolute fullest at all times.
There are pictures of vacations that were enjoyed with my family and milestones that I felt deserved to be immortalized. Events such as my daughter’s baptism, my son’s winning pinewood derby car and the moment my youngest child took her first steps. I have had many people tell me that I missed those moments and will never know the joy they brought. I disagree. I not only lived those moments, I saved them in my mind forever the moment the shutter on the camera closed. Now when my children look back on these precious seconds of their childhood, they will see exactly what I did and feel my emotions at that moment when the world was theirs and theirs alone.
Photography is not about missing out on life. It’s about recognizing that it deserves to be remembered long after the little moments are forgotten. It’s about the moment, early one autumn morning, that my daughter decided her stuffed monkey was celebrating a birthday and so he should have pictures taken. Life, in and of itself, was made for the lens. It was meant to be focused on, captured and immortalized. After all, we are here on this Earth but for a moment.
Over the years I have learned to expect beauty in the most unexpected places. Who would ever imagine that a summer storm could produce such volatile, yet vivid colors? What parent thinks that a tiny scratch on their child’s nose would become a story worth repeating on that child’s wedding day? Life is full of beauty. My job is to document that beauty even when it seems so far out of reach. My passion is living life with one eye on the viewfinder and my other open to endless possibilities.
